By a Spider's Thread

by Laura Lippman

  "I don't get it. That would make her more likely to use the credit cards, right?"

  "Not if she doesn't want him to know where she is. So she figured out a way to get around his system, get enough cash to hit the road."

  "How?"

  "Oh, she's shrewd. Rubin withdrew his cash for the week every Monday, and he seldom went to the machine again before the week was out. So she figured she had five days before he would notice that the balances were off. All she had to do was lie to him, not show him the slips at night. Starting the Monday before she left, she went to the ATM every day and withdrew five hundred dollars. That gave her twenty-five hundred."

  "Decent seed money, but it won't take you far, not with three kids."

  "She wasn't done. She bought some high-end electronics on one of the credit cards, stuff that Rubin can't find in his house. Probably sold it for twenty cents on the dollar through a friend, or a fence. We figure she got at least another thousand pulling that scam. And then, the day before she left, she deposited a check for twenty-five hundred dollars, to cover what she had taken. I guess she was worried he could come after her for theft, even though it was a joint account."

  "Where'd she get the check?"

  "It was a personal check signed by Lana Wishnia."

  "She's a manicurist. Where does a manicurist get twenty-five hundred bucks to lend?"

  Nancy nodded approvingly. "You are good. Rubin didn't know about her at all, and he thinks Natalie was just her client, but I think different. Lana told detectives the check was to repay some loans Natalie gave her over the years. My hunch is that Lana Wishnia was the fence, but it's legal, right? No law against buying electronics and selling them cheap."

  "Why didn't Natalie just write herself a big check on the joint account, wipe out the whole thing?"

  Nancy cocked an eyebrow, a trick that Tess had never mastered. "Because the bank had instructions to call Mr. Rubin if Natalie wrote a check for cash for any amount over five hundred dollars."

  "Did anyone ask Rubin about his, um, strict household bookkeeping?"

  "Absolutely. You see behavior that controlling, and you have to wonder—how else is this guy controlling his wife? Detectives checked 911 logs to see if the Rubin residence was known for calling in domestics. It came up clean, but in that community that's not unusual."

  "What do you mean, 'that community'?" Tess's tone was sharp, her Irish roots forgotten. She was suddenly 100 percent Weinstein, and the girl on the other side of the table was just another bigoted shiksa. Never mind that Tess herself had basically asked Rubin when he stopped beating his wife. That was different.

  "Look, I was posted to Northwest in the city before I came to the county. I know that the Orthodox like to take care of their problems when possible, whether it's the elderly or drugs or domestic abuse."

  "All communities should do as good a job of caring for their own," Tess said, still feeling self-righteous.

  "No question. But the downside to keeping problems all in the family is that there's no paper trail when a situation gets out of hand. If you don't get the batterers in the system when they start, then sometimes you can't clamp down on them when their behavior becomes truly life-threatening."

  "I don't see Mark Rubin as an abuser."

  "Neither do I. But I can be definite on this point because we looked into it. We also checked to see if there had been any accusations of sex abuse, if the school had noticed anything in the oldest kid's behavior. Look, we even had to consider if Mark Rubin was some criminal mastermind who'd murdered his whole family, then played the part of the grieving husband. The fact that he hired you is only further proof that he's in the clear."

  "Or an expensive bluff."

  Tess was thinking of the pregnant woman who had become a national sensation a while back. Her husband hadn't been the most persuasive grieving spouse in the world, though, given that he was an adulterer who put their house on the market and sold the family car within a month of her disappearance. Rubin was much more convincing in his agony.

  "You said you know the detective in Family Crimes who worked this. What's her take on it?"

  "Maria says if Mark Rubin had anything to do with this, he's the biggest, two-faced Bluebeard ever. No one has a bad word to say about the guy. Employees, people in his congregation, neighbors. Even ex-employees, and you know what they're like. Everyone agrees he's a great guy. Although they say it as if it were a little bit of a surprise."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah, the older ladies at his synagogue, the ones who had known him since he was a kid, kept telling Maria he was such a nice man, 'considering everything.' And when Maria asked, 'Considering what?' they'd just smile or pat her hand. Again, it's a close-knit community. They're not going to tell us all the gossip."

  "What about Natalie?"

  "Maria says no one knows her—and no one seems to want to know her. In fact, she's probably the 'everything' that all those women find so objectionable." Tess, knowing Natalie's background and youth, saw Nancy's point, "And then there's Lana Wishnia, but she's not saying anything."

  "She stonewalled me, too, but I like to think that Baltimore County Police can be a little more persuasive."

  "We can—if we have a charge on you." Again Nancy raised a single eyebrow. "But you have to remember, no law has been broken, and Mark Rubin didn't want to pursue custody through the system, so… sayonara. Not our case, not our stat. The major only expended as much energy as he did because he thought the community might get up in arms, bring all this pressure to bear if we didn't make every effort to establish there was no crime. The last thing he wanted was to turn on the news and see some little old ladies marching around the Public Safety Building, picketing the department."

  Tess was transformed back into Teresa Esther, defender of the faith. "Are you saying Jews are pushy when they want something?"

  "I'm saying people are pushy. But some communities are better organized than others, always have been."

  "What are you, anyway? You look WASP, you have a WASP name, but you sure don't have the attitude." Or the bone structure. Nancy Porter's round face was pleasant, but she would never pass as one of Baltimore's moneyed bluebloods.

  "Porter is my married name. I was born Potrcurzski. We're pretty burned out, us Poles, just as left behind as your people, Monaghan. We're never going to run this city or state again."

  "Baltimore has an Irish mayor now. He even plays in his own Irish band."

  "You know, that's one of the few things makes me glad I'm working in the county these days. My sergeant says we live in an era where the politicians want to be rock stars and the rock stars want to be politicians—but only one of those jobs actually takes talent."

  Tess laughed. "I have a feeling I'd like your sergeant. Is there anything else I should know about Rubin?"

  "His business is sound, and there's no life insurance on his wife or the children. Just on him, which is what you'd expect. Oh, and he's pretty well fixed. Not so much from the business, but from an inheritance. His dad died a few years ago, left him everything, and everything was quite a pile."

  "So why did she leave? Why run away from a rich man who adores you and gives you everything you want, if not all the cash you can carry?"

  "I'm sorry, but it's not the kind of thing we do at my shop," Nancy said. "We do more concrete stuff. Dead body, who did it, let's lock 'em up. Motives are a luxury I can't afford."

  "Still, you must trip over them from time to time. You can't be a cop without learning a lot about human nature."

  "Yeah." The single syllable carried a world of memory and meaning. "But when I do find out why someone did something—I usually wish I hadn't."

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  LIKE AN OLD LADY WHO DIDN'T TRUST BANKS, Baltimore sometimes hid its money in odd places. Robbins & Sons, a white stucco building that resembled a bunker, was tucked away on Smith Avenue, a quiet street just northwest of the city limits. Yet its nearest neighbor, a shoe st
ore, sold high heels that even Tess's inexpert eye put at three hundred dollars and beyond, while a dress store in the same strip center was advertising a trunk show for a designer who was surely famous among those who paid attention to such things. These one-named stores—Evelyn's, Soigne—had been built in a different era, when shoppers still expected to brave the elements to go door to door and had to enter stores to get a sense of their wares. The small, narrow displays offered only one or two items for a window-shopper to contemplate.

  The stores also provided an interesting contrast to the men strolling along the street here in northwest Baltimore, strictly observant Jews in beards and brimmed hats. It struck Tess for the first time how funny it was that one of the major streets through the heart of this middle-class Jewish neighborhood was named Smith. Did even streets assimilate?

  Robbins & Sons had no windows at all, just glass double doors and a sign so discreet that it was unlikely anyone ever stumbled on the furrier by accident. Was that intentional? Tess assumed that furriers were besieged these days, quivering inside their stores while picketers circled with cans of red paint. A few years back, her mother had stopped wearing the raccoon coat that Tess's father had given her on their twentieth anniversary, proclaiming herself much too nervous. She then bought a faux fur, but it was such a convincing fake that she was scared to wear it. Instead she wore a good cloth coat. "Like Pat Nixon," joked Tess's Uncle Donald, which angered his sister. Any comparison to any Nixon was considered harsh rhetoric in the Monaghan-Weinstein families.

  But there were no protesters here on this bright fall morning, and no evidence that they had been here anytime recently—no splashes of red on the pavement, no leaflets proclaiming "Fur Is Murder." There was nothing here but cars, expensive ones, with women of all ages coming and going as if it were the most normal thing in the world to shop for a fur coat on a day when the temperature would probably reach eighty degrees. Tess pushed through the doors and entered a place as hushed as a temple—and as cold as a meat locker. She wondered if the overly chilled air was for the furs or the menopausal customers.

  "May I help you, miss?"

  If the salesman thought Tess, in black trousers and white T-shirt, an unlikely customer, nothing in his manner betrayed this fact. He clasped his hands behind his back, his tone polite and helpful, yet not in the over-the-top style of a salesperson who hopes to drive someone away.

  Tess decided to test his mien before asking to see Mark Rubin.

  "Well, I don't know," she said, giving her voice a Valley Girl whine. Greenspring Valley, that is, or perhaps Worthington, a place where Baltimore's rich WASPs and Jews lived in an uneasy truce. "I've always thought of fur coats as being something my mother and grandmother wear, but after the last couple of winters, I can't help wondering if it might be a good idea."

  "A fur is a wonderful investment," the salesman said, sizing her up. She eyed him back. Tall and slim, with thinning hair, he could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, married or single, straight or gay. "I don't see you as the mink type—"

  "Why not?" Did she look poor? Movie stars shopped in T-shirts, after all, and her loafers were Cole Haans. Not as expensive as some designer brands, but not inconsequential.

  "I'm not talking about price," he said, remaining smooth and unruffled. Oh, he was a salesman through and through, but a salesman suited to luxury goods, a man who understood that moving minks and Mercedes-Benzes and Bose stereo systems meant long, drawn-out courtships—and much higher commissions. "But if your clothes today are indicative of your preferred look—what I like to call the casual sophisticate—a mink would probably be too formal. Have you thought about beaver?"

  Tess figured she could keep a straight face if he could.

  "Not really," she said. "I have to admit, I'm so overwhelmed by the process that I don't know where to begin. How can I know if I'm getting my money's worth?"

  "Trust your sense of touch." He pulled a jacket from a nearby rack and held its sleeve toward Tess, which she stroked dutifully. "We call the top hairs 'guard hairs.' These should be silky, while the underfur beneath should be even in texture. Now, how does this feel to you?"

  "Nice," Tess said. It felt like a dog, although a better-cared-for one than either of hers, whose short coats shed alarmingly.

  "Try this." He brought out another jacket, which felt a little softer and seemed to shine with more subtle variations. It was like switching to a top-line colorist after relying on Nice 'n Easy.

  "What's the difference?"

  "About two thousand dollars." The salesman smiled. He was onto her, he had to be, but the charade seemed to be as amusing to him as it was to Tess. "The second one was made from female pelts, which requires more pieces, and comes from a name designer. All those things add to the price, although not necessarily the quality. Try it on."

  "No," Tess demurred, but the salesman was already shrugging it up over her left arm, as if she were a balky toddler who didn't want to put on her snowsuit.

  "There," he said. "Look how nice you look—although with your hair I think you'd want to go with ranch instead of wild."

  Tess turned reluctantly toward the full-length mirror behind her. She had worried she would look like a furry butter-ball, but he had picked out a sleek coat with the furs placed in a gently curving pattern that flattered the figure. She looked pretty, glamorous even, not that she had ever aspired to glamour.

  Yet her image disturbed her, too. It was so matronly, so grown-up. The vision in the mirror was the woman she might have been if she had taken a few different turns in life. More accurately, this would be the Tess who had taken no turns at all, just embarked on that greased chute of marriage and motherhood. For while most of her friends had started out on a gung ho career path, Tess noticed something odd happened when the babies started coming. Female friends who never would have dreamed of leaving their jobs at their husbands' insistence had clamored for the stay-at-home-mommy gig when it became a kind of status symbol.

  It was, of course, undeniably good for the kids to have a parent at home. Tess didn't even like to put her dogs in a kennel, so she understood women who were nervous about day care. Still, it was creepy, this voluntary army of Stepford wives who didn't look quite as happy as they insisted they were. Tess had a theory that Botox had soared because so many thirty-something women were frowning. What was the source of their anxiety? They had money, as evidenced by their cars, shoes, and purses, and they clearly spent time on their appearance. Hair, nails, skin—all just so. They were the women she had glimpsed at Adrian's, the ladies who lunch, only these days it was the ladies who didn't lunch, who dutifully followed the diet of the moment and trudged to the gym, then came home to drive the SUV around in the going-nowhere circles necessitated by car pools and soccer matches and gymnastic classes.

  A sudden wheeze gripped Tess, and she felt a horrible, messy sneeze coming on, which she decided to stifle rather than risk spraying across a twelve-thousand-dollar coat.

  "Fox might be good for you, too," the salesman said thoughtfully. "Or shearling."

  "What about the… issues?"

  "What issues?" he asked sharply. One thing to be a shopping dilettante, Tess supposed, another to be a PETA activist scoping the place out.

  "Well, you know, the humane issues."

  "Oh." His expression couldn't have been blander. "I suppose that is a consideration for some people. Certainly I would never recommend a fur to someone who couldn't reconcile her personal beliefs with the industry's practices, any more than I would serve a vegetarian friend a steak. Here at Robbins & Sons, we don't proselytize for fur. But what I've found is that most people realize that nature is hierarchical, and while we try to coexist peacefully with other living things, we have created a world where people come first. At least I hope we have. We eat animals—you do eat them, right? I couldn't help noticing you were wearing leather shoes."

  "Yes, I eat meat and wear leather. I kill cockroaches, too, but I always give them a shout-out before I
go into the kitchen at night, so they have a sporting chance to flee."

  "Hmmm. So, really, for you, the question isn't whether this should be done but how others might react to you?" He let his voice scale up, but Tess sensed he wasn't really asking a question. "You care what people think."

  He was good, in some ways better than the psychiatrist that the state of Maryland had forced Tess to see up until recently. "I guess I do."

  "Consider this. What do we tell older women about avoiding street crime? We tell them to walk with confidence, heads held high, purses clutched firmly under their arms. Well, I tell my customers the same thing, especially women such as yourself, who buy their own furs. Walk with your head high. You have purchased a fine garment, a timeless garment, an investment that enhances your beauty. You walk like that, you don't have to worry about other people."

  Tess looked in the mirror again. She did look pretty. And, really, she couldn't argue against the fur business on principle. The image still bothered her, but it wasn't the source of the coat's materials, more its message, an announcement of consumption and self-indulgence. Tess could happily blow hundreds of dollars buying a piece of outsider art that her mother assumed she trash-picked, or thousands on a new computer just to go a few seconds faster on the Internet. But she could not make peace with any adornment, any object, that invited others to envy her relative comfort. It was an invitation to the evil eye, and the Weinstein side of her never wanted to provoke the evil eye. Crow had never gotten that, but then Crow had the cheerful optimism that came from being born into money and comfort.

  A soft chime sounded, indicating that the front door had opened, and Mark Rubin entered the store. He did not seem impressed by the sight of Tess in mink.

  "You find Mrs. Gordon's lynx?" the salesman asked.

  "Yes, Paul, I've handled the 'emergency' as I've handled it every year for the past decade when Mrs. Gordon has scheduled one of these trips and forgotten to call ahead to get her coats out of storage. This year it's a Scandinavian cruise."