By a Spider's Thread

by Laura Lippman

  "We offer a full range of services at Adrian's. But, given Lana's schedule, you must choose."

  "Choose…" Tess had found that repeating a word when lost in a conversation sometimes prompted the other person to provide enough information for her to continue whatever deception she was working.

  "Feet or hands, pedicure or manicure. But there won't be time for any special treatments—massage or a wrap for your hands, reflexology. We cannot offer such accommodations at the last minute."

  "Hands. A simple manicure."

  "Very well. We will see you at four, Miss…"

  "Theresa Weinstein," Tess said, not sure why she was lying, even less sure why she had chosen her mother's maiden name. But Adrian's was probably somewhere in Pikesville, so the Weinstein name might thaw the frost.

  "At four, Miss Weinstein. Have you been here before?"

  "No, it was recommended by a friend. I'll be coming from North Baltimore after a late lunch. What's the best way to get there?"

  "Take the Beltway around to the Reisterstown Road exit. We're in the old Bibelot, the bookstore that folded."

  Lose a bookstore, gain a spa. No wonder Baltimore was no longer known as "The City That Reads." But it did have great hair. Baltimore had even taken Broadway by storm with an entire musical devoted to the joys of teased coiffures.

  Tess had said at least one true thing in her exchange with the Velvet Frost: She was due in North Baltimore for a late lunch. Such a journey, no more than eight or ten miles, should have been easy enough at midday. But perhaps Vera Peters had placed a gypsy curse on Tess, for she encountered an obstacle in every mile of her trip—a series of inexplicable traffic jams on the expressway, which she abandoned only to find herself caught in a tangle created by a road-construction project. She was blocked on her alternate route by a moving van, which didn't see why it shouldn't close two lanes of traffic to unload furniture, and finally by a beer truck, whose need to deliver four cases of Bud and Bud Lite was being treated like a presidential visit at the small corner deli.

  And Tess would have been happy to offer these details as apologetic explanation to most dining companions, but the moment she saw Tyner Gray's scowling face and heard him bark, "You're late," she just shrugged.

  "Sorry. I was working. Got here as soon as I could."

  The restaurant Tyner had chosen was an oh-so-chic French bistro, Petit Louis, which had hit Baltimore's foodies like a Gallic love affair. Even the New York Times had anointed its kitchen, but Tess liked it anyway, especially during rowing season, when she had the metabolism of a cheetah. Tyner preferred it for a different reason: By one-thirty, when the ladies-who-lunch crowd cleared out, Petit Louis was fairly amenable to a man in a wheelchair. No steps, no carpets, just smooth wood and tile floors.

  "So," Tess said, expecting Tyner to get down to business as he usually did.

  "So?" he echoed, fiddling with the menu, picking it up and putting it down, as if he wasn't sure what to order. Tess selected the smoked duck for an appetizer and the steak frites for lunch, and she put in for the crème caramel at the same time, lest the kitchen run out at this late hour.

  "What she's having," Tyner told the waitress, as if he couldn't be bothered to make a decision. The young woman seemed a little disappointed that she didn't get to perform her full spiel of specials.

  "I haven't seen you at the boathouse much this fall," Tess said, making conversation as Tyner fumbled with his flatware and napkin. An Olympic rower before the car accident that had left him paralyzed below the waist, Tyner was a harsh but effective coach. It was hard for rowers to complain about sore leg muscles to a man who couldn't walk.

  "I'm out on the water before you get there," he said. "In fact, it seems to me I've seen you going out as late as six-thirty."

  "I'm self-employed. I'm not in college with eight a.m. classes. If I want to row at the disgracefully late hour of six-thirty, I'm entitled."

  Funny, Tess's father seldom riled her this way. Patrick Monaghan was a quiet man, and although he had his frustrations with Tess, his aversion to conflict was stronger than his need to change his only child.

  "It's a matter of safety," Tyner said. "A single-sculler such as yourself, with no coxswain to see what's coming, is better off when the traffic is lightest."

  "You know, I don't think you invited me to one of Baltimore's nicest restaurants to talk about my rowing habits. You could just hang out at the boathouse and yell at me there. So what do you really want to discuss?"

  If it wasn't a job, maybe it was retirement. She was fuzzy on Tyner's age, but reasonably sure he qualified for the senior-citizen discount at the dry cleaners. Tess wondered if he was going to ease someone new into his practice, a young lawyer who would take care of Tyner's regulars while building up a new roster of clients. That would probably mean less work for Tess. More worrisome, it would mean no more cheap legal assistance, which Tyner swapped out hour for hour, despite the stark difference in their billing rates. Maybe she could just get arrested less often in the future.

  Tyner cleared his throat, a noise as dry and scratchy as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, then placed a small velvet box on the table. It was an old one, judging by the greenish cast and worn spots. He popped the box open, displaying a band of silver—well, probably white gold or platinum—with a single diamond at its heart.

  "My mother's," he said.

  "You had a mother?" Inane, but Tess was not prepared for where this was heading.

  "Of course I had a mother," Tyner snapped, sounding like himself for the first time today. "Do you think I was suckled by a wolf? She gave this to me years ago, decades ago. I never thought I would have any use for it, but, well… I'm going to marry your Aunt Kitty."

  Tess was still too overwhelmed to make sense. "Does she know?"

  "Of course she knows!" Tyner's voice was so loud this time that even the blase waitstaff of Petit Louis twitched in their crisp white shirts. "I asked her last weekend. For God's sake, we've been living together for almost two years now."

  "I guess I thought you were asking my permission or something like that. Although I suppose you should really ask Dad, or one of his brothers, since Pop-Pop Monaghan is no longer around—"

  "Your aunt is in her forties—she hardly needs permission from her brothers to marry. I just wanted to show you the ring and see if you think Kitty would ever wear anything like this. It's awfully old-fashioned."

  "She likes old-fashioned things." Tess balanced the box warily on her fingertips, as if it held a poisonous insect given to impulsive attacks. "She'd prefer this to a big old solitaire on a gold band or one of those encrusted things you see on some ladies."

  "It's not… well, insulting, to present her a ring rather than give her the option of picking it out?"

  "Not at all. It's a romantic gesture. Or would have been if you had given it to her during the proposal instead of waiting for a second opinion, you doofus. Hey, how does a guy in a wheelchair propose? You can't go down on one knee, so you do you go down on one elbow?"

  "Don't be tacky," Tyner said, hugely pleased. He enjoyed Tess's company because she was one of the few people who didn't treat his wheelchair like a bad smell, something to be politely ignored under any and all circumstances. "There is one thing I do want to ask you, however."

  "Yes?"

  "Given that Kitty's and my combined ages top one hundred, we don't want to get too silly, even though this is a first wedding for both of us."

  "Good plan. Vegas? Elkton?"

  "So instead of having bridesmaids and best men and all that folderol, we want only one attendant—you."

  Tess, who had managed at this point in her life to avoid any and all manner of responsibility in the nuptial process, was not thrilled. Tyner, misunderstanding her silence, plowed ahead.

  "I know you're probably wondering why we didn't ask you and Crow to do it as a couple."

  "No, that's not it. That's not it at all—"

  "But the fact is, I'm not close
to him, and he couldn't very well be Kitty's attendant. And you told Kitty the other day you're not sure when he's going to be back from Charlottesville, so he can't really be involved in the planning, right?"

  "Right." Crow had moved home to care for his mother, who was undergoing chemo for breast cancer, and Tess didn't know when he would be back.

  "Besides, you're the one who brought Kitty and me together."

  "Don't remind me."

  "Anyway, it will be simpler. How carried away can she get if there's only one attendant?"

  Tess began to see some advantages in the situation. "Okay, sure. Crow won't mind, given that he's been staying with his parents in Charlottesville. And if I'm standing up for the bride and the groom, I could wear, like, a really sharp Armani pantsuit, or at least a skirt-and-jacket thing, instead of some god-awful bridesmaid's dress."

  "Well, actually, I'm not so sure about that." Tyner was suddenly manifesting all the nervous confusion of a young groom. "Kitty seems to have… a lot of ideas. I mean, she keeps saying it's just going to be a party where two people get married, but she's been making a lot of phone calls and appointments. I think she even has a color scheme."

  "What is it?"

  "It changes almost hourly."

  "Uh-oh."

  "But she's leaning toward black for your dress. At least, as of yesterday, she said she liked the idea of you in black."

  "Well, I can pick out a black dress on my own," Tess said with glad relief.

  "Of course you can. Except Kitty wants to… um, help." He pushed a card across the table. "She has an appointment for the both of you at this boutique in Towson. To start. She also mentioned some other places, like Vassari and Octavia and maybe the Neiman Marcus in the Washington suburbs if she can't find the right dress in Baltimore."

  The card for the Towson dress shop was white with discreet silver letters in a curvy font, a whisper of pink blossoms scattered across its face. Just touching it made Tess's palms itch.

  "So this lunch is really a bribe, right? You lured me here not to get my approval of the marriage, or even to ask my opinion of the ring, but to break the news that I have to go buy a dress in a bridal store. I can just see it. You know it's going to have some huge bow over the ass."

  "I was hoping you'd think of this lunch as a celebration. I thought we might even splurge, have a good bottle of wine with lunch. On me, of course. This is all on me."

  "Wine for lunch is fine, but I'm going to need a g-pack of crack to survive dress shopping. Be straight with me—is Kitty losing her mind? Is she getting all giddy and nuts? Just how bad is this going to be?"

  Tyner just smiled ruefully and summoned the waitress, ordering a $150 bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  A HALF BOTTLE OF CHATEAUNEUF-DU-PAPE TURNED out to be excellent preparation for Tess's appointment with Lana Wishnia at Adrian's.

  The spa had done much to obscure the bookstore Tess had so loved before it sank beneath the weight of one of the more curious bankruptcy cases in Baltimore history. From the outside it was now just another door in another suburban strip center. But that frosted glass door opened into a foreign world, a butterscotch-colored anteroom with fabric-swathed walls and two more frosted-glass doors marked salon and spa. Tess felt as if she had fallen into the bottom of a caramel sundae, or one of the more perverse compartments in Alice's rabbit hole. Come to think of it, Adrian's was probably full of potions that commanded "Drink Me" and "Eat Me," although with less immediate results than their Wonderland counterparts.

  "You are Lana's four o'clock?"

  The voice was unmistakably the Velvet Frost, but its owner was far from the style maven that Tess had envisioned. She was dumpy and middle-aged, with a large part between her front teeth. She did, however, sport acrylic nails, winged eyebrows, and fiercely streaked hair.

  "Yes."

  "She is running late." Was Tess paranoid, or was the woman blaming her for Lana's tardiness? "I would have called you, but you did not leave a contact number. May I get you anything while you wait?"

  Tess looked at the magazines arrayed fan style on a low, maple-and-glass table in front of a chenille sofa in the same maple hue. They were not real magazines, just handbooks designed to create impossible dreams in the women who were forced to wait here because Lana—or Tatiana or Esme or Jean-Paul or Horatio Hornblower—was running late. Tess wanted to ask for a magazine with articles, or even a newspaper, but she felt as if she had already acquired too many demerits.

  "No, I'm fine, just fine."

  "Tea? Coffee?" Even the easy questions sounded quizlike here.

  "No thank you."

  "Mineral water? Wine?"

  "Wine would definitely be redundant."

  The receptionist narrowed her eyes as if she thought Tess might be trying to slide a rude word past her. "You are new to us, yes? Then you must fill out a client card."

  She handed Tess a clipboard with a questionnaire as long as anything a doctor's office would require. Tess perched gingerly on the edge of the backless sofa, one of those low-slung pieces of modern furniture that seemed to be designed for Candid Camera stunts. Only a person with steel thighs could rise from it with a shred of grace intact. Dutifully, she checked off a series of "no" boxes—pregnancy, medications, chronic pain—pausing only when she reached the lengthy portion on plastic surgery. She had not even heard of some of the procedures named.

  Tess seldom gave much thought to what she wore or how she looked, but the checklist and the Velvet Frost's curled-lip inspection were making her self-conscious. Covertly, she glanced at one of the many mirrors in the room. She had a few freckles, souvenirs of a summer spent mainly outdoors, but her face was otherwise clear and unlined. Her hair was at an unruly length, neither long nor short, but that was the price of growing it out. Her makeup routine consisted of darkening her lashes and penciling a narrow line beneath her eyes to keep them from disappearing into her face.

  True, her clothes were not particularly distinguished, not by Adrian's standards. She wore black trousers and a black T-shirt beneath a man's vintage shirt, a butter yellow Banlon with black stitching. Her one concession to adulthood was a newfound preference for expensive shoes and boots, but only because she had learned they were a good value, sturdier and more comfortable than cheap ones. Today she had on a pair of black cowboy boots, whose two-inch heels put her within shouting distance of six feet.

  I yam what I yam, she decided, glancing toward the salon side of Adrian's, presumably full of women trying to be anything but. Meanwhile, white-uniformed men kept leading women out of the "Spa" door, holding their charges by the elbow of their terry-cloth robes as if they were recovering from major surgery.

  "Salmon and asparagus," one attendant whispered to his client, whose face was covered with a pale green goo that made her look as if she had just been smacked with a key lime pie. "All you want, but nothing else. Your… uh, urine will smell, but your skin will look fabulous. But only asparagus and salmon, nothing else for seven days, or it won't work. It's all about the salmon."

  "Belly or Nova?" the woman asked, and Tess's head shot up at the familiar voice issuing from the green cream.

  "Deborah?"

  "Tesser!" her cousin crowed with pleasure, and Tess remembered too late that she was here under a semifalse name and thoroughly false pretenses. At least the old family nick-name didn't give her away. "Since when do you come to Adrian's?"

  "Oh, I thought I'd start paying a little more attention to my appearance, get a manicure."

  "Well, it's a start."

  There was no malice in Deborah, although Tess had not always understood this. Her cousin simply lacked the usual filters: If a thought passed through her brain, it headed straight to her mouth. Tess had come to think of Deborah as sort of a walking James Joyce novel, albeit one narrated by a preternaturally self-satisfied matron. They had been competitive as girls, and even as adults, until they finally stopped to wonder what, exactly,
they were competing for. They had chosen different paths, but not as a rebuke to each other. And they had the foxhole of family in common, a powerful bond.

  Deborah peered into Tess's face. "Isn't this awfully far off the beaten track for you? I thought you never went outside the Beltway if you could help it."

  "Yes, but everyone says this place is the best."

  Her cousin smiled, happy to be complimented for her taste in spas. "It is, and it's convenient to Sutton Place Gourmet, not to mention a Starbucks."

  "No caffeine," her attendant practically squealed. "Are you trying to undo everything we've done?"

  Deborah giggled. She was not a stupid woman, and it was doubtful she believed that this young man had any interest in her beyond her lavish tips. Yet she clearly was enjoying their flirtatious shtick.

  "Not even one mocha?" she wheedled.

  "Decaf, no whipped cream," he decreed, and she nodded, as if his word were law, but Tess knew that her cousin would be clutching a venti with the works when she roared out of the parking lot. The Weinsteiri side of the family did not run toward sacrifice. "Now let's go make sure that Carlos does a fabulous job on your hair. Not so red this time. Something softer, a shade that sneaks up on a person. I didn't do all this work on your face just to have the Castilian wonder screw up the presentation."

  "Have fun," Deborah called to Tess over her shoulder as she headed into the salon. "You ought to think about getting a seaweed wrap next time. Or a kosher salt scrub."

  "Does that come with belly or Nova?"

  But Deborah had sailed out of earshot, so all Tess's flippancy earned was a frown from the Velvet Frost.

  "I believe Lana is ready now. You were lucky to get this appointment. She is our most popular girl." The voice thawed perhaps one degree. "I did not realize you were one of the Weinsteins. Is Deborah your sister?"

  "Cousin," Tess said, feeling the lack of challenge occasioned by telling the unadulterated truth. "First cousin."

  "Ah," the Velvet Frost said, and Tess could see her calculating: not one of the Weinsteins of Weinsteins Jewelers, just an impoverished twig from another part of the family tree. Tess's advantage was lost as quickly as it had been gained.