By a Spider's Thread Read online

  "Yes, we're a family, the Rubin family, but my father is back in Baltimore—"

  "Are you telling stories, little boy? Have you ever heard about the little boy who cried wolf?"

  His mother had gotten to the head of the line faster than Isaac thought she would. She was going to be the next one called. When she saw Isaac talking to the guard, she let out a screechy sound, gave up her place, and ran over, the twins stumbling as they tried to keep up with her.

  "I'm sorry if he was bothering you," she said to the guard, finding her usual voice, which wasn't at all like her screaming one. Men always smiled when Isaac's mother spoke, and sometimes even when she didn't. Something about his mother made men act weird, which Isaac didn't understand. She wasn't clever, like his father, she didn't know lots of interesting things. But just by smiling and looking at men, nodding at anything they said, she got whatever she wanted. Something about her made people anxious to see her happy. Even Isaac felt that way. At least he had felt like that back in Baltimore, back when his mother and he had agreed on what happy was.

  "Not at all, ma'am. But he was saying that you had left his father—"

  "Oh, Isaac," she said with a sigh, hugging him close to her, her arms hard across his back. She stroked his hair but pulled it a little, too, a warning to be quiet and still, a reminder that Zeke was not far away even if Isaac couldn't see him. Zeke was never far away. "How often have I told you that you mustn't tease people like this? Telling stories to strangers is just as bad as making jokes at an airport. You know that."

  Isaac's mom looked into the guard's face. "We're on our way to see my family, outside Chicago. But this is a busy season in my husband's business, and he couldn't come with us. We're traveling with my cousin." She tilted her head toward the old green car parked in front of the bank, although Isaac knew that Zeke wasn't in it, and he definitely wasn't a cousin, no matter where he was. He better not be a cousin. Isaac didn't want to be related to Zeke at all. And there was no family in Chicago, not that he had ever heard of, and although his father's business picked up in September, it didn't really get busy until later in the fall. Lie, lie, lie. A mother shouldn't tell so many lies.

  "I know how it is," the guard said. He pointed his finger at Isaac, placing it on the tip of Isaac's nose and bouncing it for emphasis, which made Isaac want to scratch and rub, as if a mosquito had landed there. "Now, you be good. No more stories."

  "No more stories," Isaac repeated, and he knew what it meant when books said someone's heart was heavy. His heart felt as if it had fallen to the bottom of his stomach and kept going, ending up in his shoes. He was so sad that being put in the trunk by Zeke seemed a small thing, almost. What did it matter if they put him in a trunk? No one would ever believe a little kid over a grown-up. His dad had told him it was silly to say the world was unfair, but it was, it definitely was.

  "I have enough to worry about, doing my job, without a wild card like you," Zeke had said. What job? Zeke never went to work that Isaac could see. That was the problem: Zeke never went away at all. If he went away, then Isaac could run away, or call home on the phone.

  Isaac counted backward in his head. He had talked to the guard two days ago, a Friday or maybe even a Saturday. Were banks open on the Sabbath? Was going to a bank work? But Zeke didn't worry about such things. One of the first things he had done, upon meeting Isaac and Efraim in the motel room, was take the yarmulkes from their heads and hand them to their mother, instructing her to pack them away for good. "One less thing to notice," he had said.

  That had been almost two weeks ago, and Isaac could not get used to the feel of his crown being exposed. The yarmulke was there to remind him that God was above, always, and now it was gone. Did that mean God was gone? Would God understand that the missing yarmulke, too, was beyond his control? His bare head, the unkosher meals. Efraim had eaten bacon at breakfast the other day, even after Isaac told him not to, and Zeke had laughed and laughed, as if it were all a joke. "It's so good, isn't it, little man?" Zeke had said, giving Efraim another piece. "Once you've had bacon, you'll never go back. Maybe I'll get you a lobster when our ship comes in."

  Isaac had filed this piece of information away: Lobsters were from Maine. Ships sailed on big oceans, and they needed ports if they were going to come in, although maybe some of the Great Lakes were big enough, too. Still, he was pretty sure that the ships that carried people were all on the oceans. Did this mean they were going east, which was where they had started? Wherever they were going, they weren't going very fast. They were in the car all day, it seemed, yet the countryside never changed and the towns all looked alike.

  The car stopped, and he heard the doors slam. He counted in his head, because Zeke had taken his watch from him, too. One, one thousand, two, one thousand—all the way up to two hundred, one thousand, more than three minutes. And then they were off again, the tires making a great squealing noise, the car surging, then settling down. He wondered how long Zeke would drive before he let Isaac out. What if Zeke forgot? But his mother would never forget that he was back here. She would make Zeke take him out as soon as possible.

  He touched his head, found that it was still covered by a thick mat of bristly hair, then reached his arm up to the lid of the trunk and pressed on it, as if he might be able to pop it through sheer will. He decided to pretend the trunk was the sky, placing the stars that he knew best. Sirius, Orion. The North Star. If you can find the North Star, his father had told him, you can navigate by night, find your way. You will never be lost if you can find the North Star. Or, better yet, Isaac could be Jonah, in the belly of the whale. Which may not have been a whale, according to Isaac's dad, but just a very big fish instead.

  Only Isaac's situation was not the same as Jonah's. Jonah got swallowed by the whale because he didn't want to do God's will. Isaac was in the trunk because he was trying to do what God wanted. At least, he was pretty sure that God wanted his family to go back to their old life. The story of Jonah was told at Yom Kippur—which was no more than a month away, Isaac realized. There was something about a plant, which Jonah loved, and the worm that God sent to kill it, which made Jonah angry at God. Of course, God had sent the worm, so it was really God who'd made the plant die, to teach Jonah a lesson. Perhaps Zeke was the worm in Isaac's life, and there was a lesson to be learned here, too. Well, Isaac was good at lessons. He'd figure out what God wanted him to do, and he'd do it. His family would be home again, and everything would be the way it was before Zeke-the-worm came along.

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY

  * * *

  Chapter One

  TESS MONAGHAN HAD BEEN A HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR when her father had bestowed his single life lesson, the one piece of advice that was supposed to open all doors and allow his only child to hurdle every obstacle: He showed her how to shake a man's hand.

  He demonstrated by making firm, confident contact at the V between her thumb and index finger, then gave her arm one adamant shake. "Don't wag it like a garden hose," Patrick Monaghan had said, and that was that. His daughter was ready to go forth into the world, or at least the world her father knew, where a handshake still counted for something.

  Patrick Monaghan had neglected, however, to tell his daughter what to do when the intended recipient of her firm, manly handshake looked at her palm as if it were contaminated.

  "I'm so sorry," she said, remembering a beat too late. "But I thought—"

  "Your uncle told me your mother's family was Conservative," her prospective client said, hands clasped behind his back, just in case she made another lunge for his digits.

  "Well, I think what my grandfather always said was 'The temple my family does not attend must be Conservative.' The Weinsteins are not a particularly observant bunch."

  Mark Rubin didn't laugh at the old family joke. Several inches taller than Tess, which put him well over six feet, he was stocky in a robust, attractive way, and he wore a beautifully tailored suit that emphasized his broad chest and shoulders. He
had black-brown eyes, a trim black beard, and the kind of blue-black hair that teenage girls tried to emulate when they went through a Goth phase, only with a shine that marked it as natural. The overall effect reminded Tess of a stuffed-sealskin otter she had been given as a child, back when such a gift would not have been regarded as a gauche act of political incorrectness.

  Or perhaps she had that old toy on her brain because she knew this man sold furs for a living, and the otter had been fashioned from the leftovers of an aunt's jacket. She wondered if Rubin wore a fur coat himself, when winter came. This September day was almost too warm for his lightweight wool suit.

  "Your uncle," he said, his voice stiff as his collar, "is quite active in Jewish causes. That's how we met and how he came to recommend you when he found out I needed the services of someone in your line of work."

  "My Uncle Donald is active in Jewish causes? Was it court-ordered?"

  Rubin frowned, although this wasn't an attempt at humor on Tess's part. Her Uncle Donald had had a short-lived association with a sleazy state senator that haunted him to this day.

  "I'm not sure when he started volunteering, but I met him over ten years ago, so it's been quite some time. He's a very good man, your uncle."

  "Oh," she said, annoyed and flustered by the hint of reproof in his voice, the implication that her uncle had not prepared her well for this meeting. Uncle Donald had, in fact, briefed her thoroughly. He had told her he had an acquaintance, that the acquaintance was a wealthy furrier, an Orthodox Jew in need of a discreet private detective. Modern Orthodox, Uncle Donald had clarified, not Hasidic, which was why Tess had thought herself on safe ground offering Rubin her hand.

  Really, the only thing that Uncle Donald had neglected to mention was the large pole permanently inserted in Mark Rubin's sphincter.

  "Would you like a seat? Something to drink? I keep Coca-Cola and bottled water in my fridge, and… well, that's kosher, right? If it's done under supervision. We could check the label for… what? A little k in a circle… ?"

  "I'm fine," Mark Rubin said, taking the wooden chair opposite her desk. His dark eyes scanned the room, absorbing his surroundings without comment. Tess had decorated the one-room office with whimsical artifacts to provide conversational fodder for the ill at ease, but these photographs and strange objets d'art didn't seem to be having much effect on Rubin. He didn't even raise his eyes to the "Time for a Haircut" clock, a barbershop find of which Tess was particularly proud.

  Although it smarted a little now, sitting beneath that glowing clock, given the untimely circumstances of Tess's most recent haircut. Self-consciously, she reached for her hair, a stubby ponytail where a long braid had once hung. Her friend Whitney said the style made Tess look like one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. It was, like most of Whitney's tactless assessments, all too true, but Tess didn't care. She wanted her braid back, and she was prepared to live through all the growing-out stages.

  The furrier did take notice of the greyhound and the Doberman vying for control of the sofa. The greyhound, Esskay, was winning, but only because she fought dirty, rabbiting her legs so her untrimmed toenails scraped the tender-skinned Miata, who whimpered piteously. Esskay always triumphed over Miata, the world's most docile Doberman.

  "Are the dogs for protection?"

  "More for companionship. The neighborhood's not that bad."

  "Times change. My grandfather couldn't wait to get out of East Baltimore. Of course, we lived closer to Lombard Street, just off Central."

  "Near the old synagogue."

  "There were several synagogues in the neighborhood then."

  He had a funny way of holding his neck, as if that pole in his butt ran all the way up his backbone, and Tess wondered if his rigid posture came from years of balancing a yarmulke on the crown. There was no sign of a bobby pin or a clip. Did Mark Rubin consider bobby pins cheating? Were bobby pins unorthodox? Up to five minutes ago, Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan had considered herself well versed in the religion practiced by her mother's side of the family. She knew a little Yiddish, could fake her way through a seder as long as the Haggadah included an English translation. But now she felt 100 percent goyish. To her visitor she probably looked like some field-hockey player from Notre Dame Prep.

  "Did Donald tell you anything of my situation?"

  "Only that it was a missing-person case, an unusual one that the police won't handle. He said you would prefer to fill me in on the details."

  "Persons," he said. "Missing persons. Four, in fact. My entire family."

  "Divorce?" She suppressed a sigh. Until recently Tess had disdained divorce work, picking and choosing her jobs. But she had lost several weeks of work this summer and could no longer afford to be fussy.

  "No, nothing like that. I came home one day and they were gone."

  "Voluntarily?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I assume your wife's flight was legal and not suspicious, or this would be a police case."

  "The police agree it's not their case," he said, his voice so low as to be almost inaudible, and Tess realized that what she had taken for coolness was an attempt to keep strong emotions in check. "Me, I'm not so sure. I went to work, I had a family. I came home, I didn't. I certainly feel as if something has been stolen from me."

  "Was there talk of a separation? Had you been quarreling? It's just hard to imagine such a thing happening out of the blue."

  "But that's exactly what did happen. My wife left with my children, with no warning, no explanation. She simply disappeared the Friday before Labor Day, right before school started and just as my business was picking up."

  "Early September is your busy season?"

  "No, but many of my customers get their furs out of storage in the month before the high holidays, just in case."

  "Would the Orthodox wear fur to shul on Yom Kippur?" Tess had no idea where her mind had dredged up this odd fact, but she felt as if she had just pulled off a sophisticated thought in a foreign language. Score one for her.

  "Not all my customers are Orthodox. They're not even all Jewish."

  Point lost. Tess had envisioned a sea of glossy hats in a synagogue, but maybe she was thinking of some long-ago church service her grandfather had dragged her to. Or perhaps she wasn't having a memory so much as she was replaying a movie version of someone else's memories. Probably Barry Levinson's. A lot of people in Baltimore had Barry Levinson's life lodged in their heads and had begun to mistake it for their own.

  "It's never cool enough to wear a fur in September, not in Baltimore."

  "Yes, but hope springs eternal." He offered Tess a crooked smile. "I guess that's why I'm here."

  She bent her head over her desk, focusing on the lines of the legal pad in front of her, counting on Rubin to get his emotions under control if she didn't look straight at him. Tess was sure he didn't want her to see him cry. She was even surer that she didn't want to see him cry. Men crying creeped her out.

  "If your wife took your children without your permission, isn't that a kidnapping? Can't the police go at it from that angle? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the work, but the police have far more resources than I do."

  "I know, and that's why I started with them. But… it's amazing. If you're married and your spouse leaves you, taking your children, you have no real rights. I've been told that I have to get divorced in absentia and petition for custody. Only then will I have any rights to assert. And that could take up to a year."

  "Oh, there has to be some way to expedite a divorce in this case. I can't imagine the state would hold to the one-year rule in such a case." Maryland did have odd marital laws, Tess knew. It was all too easy to get married here—it was one of the few states that didn't require a blood test, which years ago had made Elkton a destination for impatient New Yorkers—but relatively difficult to get divorced. A legacy, she had always assumed, from its Catholic founders. Marry in haste, live in purgatory.

  "You don't understa
nd. Even if I divorced my wife under Maryland law, it wouldn't count, not to me."

  "Why not?"

  "I would need a get from a rabbinic court as well. Divorce may be granted easily in the world at large, but my faith insists that a couple make every attempt at mediation and reconciliation before giving up on a marriage."

  "But I assume your wife's actions would satisfy even a—what did you call it?—rabbinic court." Tess had an image of an appeals court, only in slightly different robes and with the bushy beards, side curls, and large-brimmed hats of the Hasidim.

  "Perhaps, but it would not satisfy me. How can I give up on my marriage when I don't know what went wrong? You have to understand she gave no sign, absolutely no sign, that she was unhappy in any way. How could she be on the verge of something so drastic and provide no clue?"

  She probably gave you a million clues, Tess thought, but kept the observation to herself. In her experience, men were capable of going to great lengths to ignore the evidence of women's unhappiness. It was how men survived, by not inquiring too closely about the melancholy some women carried with them. If they ignored it, maybe it would go away.

  Sometimes it was the woman who went away instead.

  "Mr. Rubin…" She paused, but he did not invite her to call him Mark, so she forged ahead. "The very nature of my work requires me to ask rude, intrusive questions, not unlike the kind that doctors and lawyers ask, so I'll beg your forgiveness in advance. Did you have a good marriage?"