"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."

LIKE AN OLD LADY WHO DIDN'T TRUST BANKS, Baltimore sometimes hid its money in odd places. Robbins amp; 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 store, 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 amp; 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?"