Her mailbox culled, Tess settled down to the messages from people who actually knew her. There was a political petition from Whitney, who had awakened one morning and decided she actually cared about the world. And an oddly formal invitation to lunch from Tyner Gray, a lawyer who had helped her get started as a PI and still threw her work. He had, in fact, vetted Rubin and hooked Tess up with Mrs. Public Works, so Tess probably owed him a lunch. She typed back her RSVP.

She saved for last the daily SnoopSisters Digest, a networking service for female private investigators that was fast becoming the highlight of Tess's working day.

Dear Sisters, the first entry read. Weather fine and clear in St. Louisthis a.m., almost too warm to my way of thinking.I am trying to figure out where a prominent local man may have stashed assets prior to wife's divorce filing. Usual trails all dead-ended. Any thoughts?Letha in St. Louis.

Dear SS'ers: There's a good seminar on computer-related investigation in Houstonin January. I'm enclosing a link to the program sked. I'll put you up if you don't want to spring for a hotel room. By the way, here's a link to one of those quiz sites that helps you figure out whether you're a hobbit, an elf, or a troll. I'm an elf. JR, your TexasTornado.

The digest was the brainchild of Tess's onetime partner, Gretchen O'Brien. Baltimore born and bred, Gretchen had slipped on the ice last winter and suddenly decided she wanted to live in… Chicago. "They do winter right there," Gretchen had said with her usual conviction. "If you're going to have winter, you might as well have it in a city that can cope." Tess suspected there was a man involved in this western trek, but closemouthed Gretchen seldom yielded such personal information.

Soon after she returned to work in late August, Tess had scored a lead on an identity thief she was pursuing. The guy was in Naperville, Illinois, but moving fast. Tess's client, already facing bankruptcy because of her former fiance's credit-card shenanigans, couldn't afford for Tess to buy the pricey last-minute plane fare. (She was one of the clients who ended up stiffing Tess, but ever so apologetically.) The guy was such a small-timer that the Naperville police couldn't be bothered to pick him up in a timely fashion. Enter Gretchen, who had already made contacts with several Chicago-area bounty hunters. She had the guy hog-tied on his own motel-room bed within three hours of Tess's e-mail, and DuPage County was happy to extradite him once he was caught.

Where Tess saw a fortuitous coincidence, Gretchen had seen the future of the small businesswoman.

"The thing is, independents like us could save money if we had a network operating in key hub cities," Gretchen had decreed. "Not so much with collars, but with paperwork, the various bureaucracies. Everything's still a long way from being online, and there's always stuff you can only get in person, with a little persuasion. Why not have a cooperative, with women working out of key cities, exchanging work on a barter basis?"

And so the SnoopSisters Digest was born. Tess loathed the name. "Why not Miss Marple's Tea Party?" she had suggested. "Or the Redheaded League?" The literal but never literary Gretchen had pointed out that their only flame-haired member was Letha in St. Louis.

Even with the unfortunate name, the network was an unqualified success. There were still some wide-open places to be filled-they had no one to cover the vast swath west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies, and an Atlanta connection would have been helpful. But they were otherwise solid along the eastern seaboard and could do most of Texas and the Pacific Coast in a pinch. They shared information, brainstormed tough problems, and, as they got to know one another, divulged more and more details about their private lives-boyfriends, husbands, teething children, rambunctious dogs, garden pests (except for Gretchen, who got very impatient with what she called the "damn chitchat"). A typical digest might contain information about a handy new database followed by a recipe for those overwhelmed by the summer bounty of tomatoes and zucchini.

And Tess loved it, somewhat to her amazement. The digest was a virtual kaffeeklatsch, with all the chummy camaraderie of an office and none of the backstabbing politics. The group was also genuinely helpful-no one-upmanship, no macho posturing, no disdain for simple questions.

Dear S-Sisters,she wrote that morning, refusing to use the full name on principle and eschewing "SS" because of its unkind historic associations. I have scanned three photos into the shared files, part of a missing-persons case. To say that the information is sketchy would be generous. Natalie Rubin, nee Peters, disappeared three weeks ago with three children-a boy, Isaac, 9, and boy-girl twins, Efraim and Penina, 5. Police have ruled out foul play, but husband insists he never saw it coming and thinks-hopes-her flight may have actually been done for his benefit. What's the emoticon for skepticism? I'll enter DOBs for all four into the shared files. No known aliases. No known anything, really. Assumption is they're traveling together, but who knows?

It pained Tess a little, adding this cynical bit of doubt, but, out of Rubin's sight, she had to be tough-minded, entertain the possibilities he could not. There was the notorious Pennsylvania case of almost two decades ago, where a woman and two children had disappeared. The woman's body was found within forty-eight hours, the victim of a bizarre plot by her charismatic lover; the children had never been found. And if everyone was alive… well, it was hard to travel with one child, much less three. Harder still when there was no money and no vehicle. Whatever Natalie was running from or to, she'd run faster alone, to paraphrase Kipling. Would appreciate any ideas about how to proceed.

Tess then added a few lines about Baltimore's glorious Indian summer, described the muffin she was eating, and asked, almost as an afterthought, Anyone here know much about Orthodox Judaism? I'm curious because my client-Modern Orthodox, not Hasidic-refused to shake my hand. I knew; but forgot, about the prohibition against men touching women 'who are not their wives. Still, shouldn't the religion have evolved beyond this concept by now? What's the point in this day and age?

Tess disconnected and tilted her face back to the sun, trying to convince herself that she felt like Goldilocks. Everything was almost just right-the weather, her work. Rubin's job alone would make her fourth quarter, and now there was a possibility that Tyner was going to throw something lucrative her way. Why else would he summon her to lunch at Petit Louis? Meanwhile, she would start the Rubin case tomorrow by visiting Vera Peters, Natalie's mother. She imagined a Pikesville matron, a more devout version of Tess's Weinstein aunts. Perfect nails, perfect hair, shining house. Really, how estranged could any Jewish mother be from her daughter?

Then again, perhaps the reason that Natalie Rubin had exploded, taking her whole family with her, was that she had kept everything from everyone. Tess could see that happening. She had been accused of doing the same thing, but the way she saw it, a girl just couldn't win. You either talked too much or too little. There was denial, that old river in Egypt, but there also was a place called Laconia, the aptly named land that had once contained Sparta. Tess was determined to live in Laconia for a while, a place where there wasn't so much yakking about feelings and emotions.

And, yes, she knew all about the little Spartan boy who had let the pilfered fox nibble his internal organs rather than cry out in pain, but she wasn't worried. All you had to do to avoid that fate, Tess figured, was not steal any foxes.