"And you'll carry your cell and check in with me?"
"I'll carry my cell."
Whitney handed Mark her card on the way out. "We're nonsecular, but we do good work. Mostly social services with a little symphony stuff thrown in for Mom. I'll send you our most recent report."
She then climbed into Tess's Toyota and fell asleep, in the manner of a hyper child exhausted by her own ceaseless energy.
"How do you know her?" Mark asked with the kind of frightened awe that Whitney often inspired in new acquaintances.
"College," Tess said. "On the Eastern Shore. But she transferred to Yale for languages-and the connections. Whitney was always very canny that way."
"Perhaps I'll send Isaac to the University of Maryland after all."
TUESDAY
Chapter Thirty-eight
TESS CHECKED IN WITH MARK AT 9:00 A.M., AND FOUND him at the Wyndham as promised, where his only complaint was restlessness and the lack of a view.
"I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not working," he said. "I need to do something."
"Take a walk," Tess said, then corrected herself. "No, you should stay inside. If you're really bored, I'll phone my aunt's store and ask her to messenger over some books, whatever you want. Meanwhile, I'm trying to decide if I should spend the day doing surveillance at your house or tracking down Lana. Maybe she's surfaced back at the salon."
"Do the surveillance," Mark said. "Keep watching for Lana, at least during the day. Then camp out in my home this evening. After all, anyone who knows me wouldn't expect to find me home during the day."
It was a good plan, and Tess felt a little sheepish about her client's being more clearheaded than she was.
"Maybe I should hang out at your work, then, see if any strangers come around."
"No point to that. Paul will be watching. No, go to the beauty salon, then my house."
"Surveillance is tricky on your block. You have the kind of neighbors that are apt to report a strange fourteen-year-old Toyota parked at the curb. And pedestrians are even more suspect in that part of Baltimore."
"What if I give you the security code, so you can open the garage door and enter the house through the kitchen? We keep a spare key beneath a flowerpot on some shelving that has gardening stuff."
"Jesus, Mark. Natalie knows that. She could have come in-or sent someone in-at any time."
Mark laughed. "She has her own key, Tess. I didn't change the locks. Who knows? Maybe she'll show up tonight, come right through the front door as if nothing ever happened."
His tone had a light, almost elated edge to it, as if this were the outcome he still hoped for.
"Just stay in your room. I know you can't eat the hotel food, but I'll arrange for someone to bring in a kosher meal."
"I've already made those arrangements for myself. I called the Jewish Museum and asked what catering service they use for their monthly board meetings."
"Great. I'll check in again at noon. Be good."
"Feel free to help yourself to anything in the refrigerator. And the various remote controls for the television and the DVD are in the drawer of the coffee table."
"It's surveillance, not babysitting, Mark." But she wondered just how much food Mark would have in the house, after living on his own for a month, and whether she would find any of it appealing. "If I were to order food-say, a pizza, just for example, or Chinese-is it okay if it's not kosher? Or will I somehow violate your house by bringing in treyf?"
"There are paper plates and plastic utensils in the cupboard just to the right of the refrigerator. Use those, take your containers with you, and it should be okay. Although, really, there are some lovely frozen latkes. They thaw in seconds in the microwave."
Hanging out in Mark's house was not unlike the babysitting gigs of Tess's teenage years. Only instead of listening for muffled cries from a child's bedroom, she strained her ears toward any out-of-place sounds on the quiet suburban street. And, just like when she'd been babysitting, she was bored out of her mind in less than thirty minutes.
It had been a long, fruitless day-Lana was still MIA at work and home-and Mark had steadfastly declined to call the police about the possible threat to his life, no matter how Tess coaxed in their phone conversations. "We'll talk about that tomorrow," he insisted over and over.
Uninterested in food, she decided to indulge in another old babysitting habit-unbridled snooping. The house was neat and fairly clean, but there was that indefinable absence, the feel of a missing woman. Everything was just a bit awry, not to mention dusty. After inspecting the bookshelves and the contents of the various medicine cabinets, Tess tried the doors of Natalie's walk-in closet. The clothes, suitable to an Orthodox woman in their style and hues, were clearly expensive. Natalie had dozens of shoes and a shelf of fashionable hats, which she probably needed for synagogue. A built-in safe indicated a cache of fine jewelry. Why hadn't Natalie taken those with her to pawn as necessary? Because she wanted them back, Tess thought. Because whatever's going on is temporary, a contingency. She always meant to get them back. No fur coats, however-could she have sold them to raise money for her escape? Then Tess remembered it was still storage season. Except for excitable types such as the legendary Mrs. Gordon, who had needed her lynx before she headed off to see the fjords.
Only if the famously difficult Mrs. Gordon were on a cruise-how could she have another emergency? A distracted, lost-in-thought Mark had said last night's call was from Paul. Did that mean Mrs. Gordon had located a ship-to-shore telephone at what must be 3:00 a.m. her time and called Paul at home, demanding to have another coat airlifted to the Norwegian Princess! Dubious. Extremely dubious.
Adrenaline on alert, Tess called Mark's cell phone and got voice mail for the first time that day. She consulted a Rolodex next to the phone in Mark's study and found a home number for his salesman, Paul Zuravsky.
"Last night? No, Mark and I spoke this morning, and that was it. He told me he was going to be with you all day again."
Tess was too upset to care about the disapproving note in Paul's voice, as if he blamed the freckled shiksa for Mark's taking time away from the business.
"Paul, do you know where Mark was calling from?"
"He must have been on his cell, I think, because the reception was bad. But he didn't mention where he was."
"Did he say anything else about what he planned to do today? Was there anything out of the ordinary about the conversation?"
"No. But something odd happened early this afternoon. The vice president from Mark's bank called, pretty agitated. He wanted to talk to Mark about his decision to close an account. I didn't think anything of it, because Mark's capable of getting in a snit with people, forever moving and closing accounts to get better rates and deals. He's a big believer in the well-timed fit."
Tess remembered how he had terrorized the wholesaler from Montreal. Still, she couldn't see how a bank had managed to enrage him just now. Mark had claimed to be in his hotel room all day. But he had told her to call on the cell.
"Did he take the money out in cash? How much?"
"No idea. Enough to get a vice president to follow up with a phone call."
"That fucker," Tess said, and Paul coughed as if shocked, although Tess bet that the Mrs. Gordons of the world used a few choice words when their whims weren't indulged. "He set me up. He made sure I would be occupied all day so he could go behind my back and cut some deal with them. The idiot. They'll take the money and kill him."
"What are you talking about? He's been with you all day-" but she hung up on Paul, too agitated to explain, and dialed the Wyndham's main number.