By a Spider's Thread: A Tess Monaghan Novel (30 page)

They stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts on Reisterstown Road before heading to the highway.

“Kosher,” Mark explained. “And quick.”

“I usually don’t have a chocolate frosted for lunch, but sugar and caffeine will be a boon. Zanesville is at least eight hours from here. But if they head east, we could catch a break and overlap them.”

“We’re due for a break, don’t you think?”

“Definitely.” Tess, who had taken the first driving shift, was grateful she had a reason to stare straight ahead. She still didn’t know whether to tell Mark what Larry Kirsch had said about Natalie’s visits to the prison, the “services” she had provided. “Mark” — the name still felt funny in her mouth, but he didn’t correct her — “how much do you know about Natalie’s life before you met?”

“How much could there be to know? She was eighteen.”

“And she had already decided to embrace Orthodox Judaism
before
she met you?”

“Yes, but she didn’t know how to go about it. That was why she sought me out. Her father suggested I could help her find a rabbi who would oversee her education, prepare her for a bat mitzvah.”

“How…propitious.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “But her father’s attempt to blackmail her later —”

“I told you, I was never tempted by Boris’s games. Marriages must be based on trust. Whatever Boris wanted to tell me about Natalie was unimportant. She was so young. What could she possibly have done that couldn’t be forgiven?”

Tess’s thoughts were going somewhere else. If all Boris had on Natalie were his allegations about their own little prison-outreach program, as it were, she could have bluffed her way around that. A few tears, a convincing story, and Mark would have been willing to believe it was all a vile lie. Boris had something more concrete on his daughter — and a potential buyer, as he had told Tess, but one who hadn’t paid him yet.
If I don’t get my due by the end of the month,
he had said,
I’ll put it back on the market
. Why had he been so definite about the date? Something was supposed to happen this month, the same month Natalie had disappeared.

“You should sleep,” she told Mark. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be spelling each other behind the wheel of this car.”

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I got maybe two hours last night.”

“You told me you slept fine last night.”

“Two hours
is
fine for me. It’s about as much sleep as I’ve had in the past month.”

They had reached the turnoff that had taken them to western Maryland the day before, but the skies were not threatening today. The countryside’s beauty had a mocking edge — the trees crimson and gold, the hills still green. Tess’s cell phone rang, and she picked it up, expecting her emergency dog-sitter.

“Tess Monaghan?” The voice was an older woman’s, enthusiastic and a little breathless. “This is Mary Eleanor Norris, and I’ve got ’em in my sights.”

I
saac noticed the car first because it was a Mini Cooper, a gold one. He loved Mini Coopers. He and his father had watched
The Italian Job
— the real one, not the remake — just last month. His father said he was pretty sure Michael Caine might be Jewish, which surprised Isaac because he didn’t know Jews could have English accents. This Mini Cooper wasn’t right behind them, but it never lagged more than a few car lengths back. The other cars on the highway whizzed past Zeke, who was driving a very steady fifty-five, staying in the right lane, unusual for him. He didn’t drive fast, but he liked to zig and zag, muttering under his breath at the other drivers.

Then again, it was odd to be on such a big highway, which Zeke never seemed to pick. Plus, he had taken Isaac out of the car earlier than usual, and everyone seemed to be acting weird. Whenever Isaac glanced over his shoulder, the Mini Cooper was there. He twisted his body, so he was looking out the rear window, trying to catch the driver’s eye. It was a woman, an old one. She had gray hair, and she used her cell phone from time to time, which shocked Isaac. He didn’t think old people did dangerous things like that. He was even more shocked when she lit a cigarette. He didn’t know anyone who smoked. Not even Zeke smoked. Paul at his father’s store sometimes smelled of tobacco, but that was from a pipe, which wasn’t so bad because you didn’t do it as much.

The driver noticed Isaac looking at her and pulled into the adjacent lane, keeping at the same pace. She seemed to give Isaac a friendly nod, but he wasn’t sure. With a swift glance over his shoulder at Zeke, he began working his hand. She waved back.
No, no, no,
he wanted to scream.
Watch me. Pay attention.
But of course, he mustn’t make any noise, mustn’t do anything that Zeke would notice.

Too late. “How long has that car been back there, Warren?”

Isaac didn’t answer. He never answered to that name.

“Yo, Isaac, my man. The gold Mini Cooper. Has it been with us for a while?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Since we left the store?”

“I didn’t see it at the store,” Isaac said, which was true.

“So how long? Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

“I don’t have a watch,” Isaac said. “You took it away from me, remember? You threw it away on the second day because it beeped every hour on the hour and you said it made you crazy.”

Zeke had done just that, yanking it from Isaac’s arm and throwing it out the car window while he drove.
I spent the last ten years of my life living on a schedule,
he had said.
I don’t need to be reminded of every hour going by.
Well, duh, school was like that, too, and Isaac never complained.

“I’m probably just paranoid,” Zeke said to Isaac’s mom. “It’s not like the Ohio State Police drive Mini Coopers. Probably just some anxious driver who doesn’t want to scratch her precious little toy.”

Isaac’s mom glanced back. Something bad had happened, but Isaac couldn’t figure out what. The twins weren’t speaking at all anymore, and his mother had said only a few words to him since Zeke took him out of the trunk, her tone dull and strange. And although the man at the store had given his mother lots of cash — cash, not a check, which was different — they had been given only apples and bananas for lunch. Not that Isaac minded. Fruit was always kosher.

“We’re getting close to Wheeling,” Zeke said. “Let’s see what happens if we exit there.”

They left the highway at one of the first entrances to the West Virginia town, and the Mini Cooper followed, much to Isaac’s joy. Zeke began driving recklessly, gunning the car through red lights, making sudden turns, but the Mini Cooper was always there, a determined gold bug. Isaac couldn’t help rooting for it. He didn’t know why the car was following them, but it had to have been sent by his father. He tried to give the driver a little wave, one that Zeke couldn’t see, to show that he was on her side.

“Turn around, Isaac,” Zeke said.

“But I’m carsick, and this helps.”

“Don’t be silly. Looking backward makes it worse. Looking forward is what helps.”

“No, it really does help him,” his mother said, taking his side for once. “I don’t know why, but he likes to look out the back when he’s sick.”

Unable to shake the determined little car, Zeke pulled into a drive-through lane at a Burger King. It was past three, but the line was a long one, moving slowly. The Mini Cooper didn’t join the line but parked on the street opposite the restaurant’s exit. Car by car, Zeke edged up the line, placing an order for two cheeseburgers and two milk shakes, then finally rounding the corner, out of the Mini Cooper’s sight.

“Slide over, Nat,” Zeke muttered. “Take the wheel. And when you get the food, just pull over as if you’re going to eat it here in the parking lot.”

“Why? What —”

“Trust me,” he said, and Isaac wished he could say,
No, don’t trust him. Please stop trusting him.
But his mother scooted across the seat, taking the wheel, and Zeke ambled away from the car as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He headed toward the street, but he didn’t walk toward the Mini Cooper. Instead he turned right, strolling away from it.

A few minutes later, as Isaac sat ignoring the cheeseburger his mother had placed in his lap, he saw Zeke walking back, but now he was on the other side of the street. He had left his jacket in the car, so he was in just a T-shirt, but he had taken the baseball cap he always wore, and it was pulled down tight. The woman behind the wheel of the car was talking on her cell phone, glancing at the Plymouth from time to time.

Look behind you,
Isaac wanted to scream.
Watch out for that man in the baseball cap.
He thought about trying to get out of the car and running toward her, but he had a twin on either side, so he couldn’t move without crawling over one of them, and his mother would probably grab him before he got out. He wondered if he should lean over the seat and start pressing the horn, but that still wouldn’t get the woman in the Mini Cooper to look at Zeke. He watched, his stomach flip-flopping, as Zeke suddenly ducked down behind the Mini Cooper. Had he dropped something? He straightened back up a minute later and started walking in the other direction. He disappeared from sight again, and Isaac could tell that his mother was worried. She began to shake, muttering to herself.

“He’s going to leave me,” she said. “I’ve ruined everything. He can’t stay now.”

Isaac thought it would be wonderful if Zeke left, but he couldn’t stand to see his mother so upset.

“Mama?”

“What?”

It was one of the first times they had been alone, out of Zeke’s earshot, since the trip began. Isaac and his mother used to talk all the time, about all sorts of things. Not the same things he discussed with his father. In fact, Isaac did most of the talking, and his mother listened. But she had seemed so interested in everything he had to say — about school and books and what he had done that day. She didn’t know all the things his father knew. She was not a person you would go to if you wanted to find out how something scientific worked or learn about a World War II battle. But she had always been someone Isaac could count on.

“Why don’t we live with Daddy anymore?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

But she had said that before, over and over again, and he wasn’t going to settle for that answer anymore.

“Do you love him?”

“Not in the way a woman needs to love her husband.”

“Why not?”

“Only God can explain that, Isaac. It’s not something people can control, who they love, who they don’t.”

“But you loved him when you married him, right? You loved him once?”

No answer.

“You have to love people to marry them.”

“I suppose.”

“Mama — do you love me?”

“Of course I do.” These words seemed to rush out of her. “More than anything in the world, Isaac.”

“But if you stopped loving Daddy, couldn’t you stop loving me, too? Are you going to leave me someday?”

His mother began to cry, sobbing harder than the twins ever did, which was not at all what Isaac wanted. He patted her shoulder, trying to comfort her, begging her to stop. The twins, seeing their mother cry, began to weep, too, wailing like animals who had been hurt.

“Pretty soggy in here,” Zeke said, sliding into the passenger seat. “Now, dry off and start driving. She won’t follow us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Just drive, Natalie. Take the highway east, all the way back into —” Zeke paused, looked at Isaac. “Just head east, and I’ll tell you how to get where we need to go. I want to buy new wheels — and dump these. We’ll park this wreck in a shopping center somewhere, take the tags.”

“Won’t the missing tags just make them notice it sooner?”

“Maybe. But it also means they have to get inside, check the VIN number, which will lead them back to Amos. And that’s a dead end these days, you’ll pardon the expression.”

Isaac glanced over his shoulder, silently rooting for the Mini Cooper. The car started to follow them as they headed up the street, but there was a horrible
whap-whap-whap
noise, and it stopped abruptly, lurching toward the curb.

“I punctured her tires,” Zeke said, laughing. “Let her spend the afternoon in Wheeling. We’ll be over the state line before she figures it out.”

Isaac watched as the Mini Cooper faded from view. He waved, not sure what else to do, then made a thumbs-up sign, so the driver wouldn’t feel too bad. She had done her best, but it was so hard to win with Zeke. It was like Battleship. He was going to have to wait for Zeke to make a mistake. But in Battleship, Isaac remembered, it was the littlest boat that was the hardest to find, and that made it the most powerful.

T
he Roy Rogers at the rest stop wasn’t kosher, not that it mattered. Mark Rubin had no appetite after Mary Eleanor’s last call, in which she confessed she had lost the family in Wheeling.

“She said everyone looked good,” Tess said, not for the first time. She was feeling guilty for being able to enjoy food, much less taste it. But she was famished, and the last Roy Rogers in Baltimore had closed its doors months ago, so this meal was a treat for her. “She saw all the kids, especially Isaac, who kept peering over the backseat and waving at her.”