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By Root 224 0

—Lord, how old-fashioned—unnerved her. She trusted Mrs. Blossom, but no one’s eyes saw exactly what she saw. And while her instincts were far from unerring, they were her instincts. If she had visited Don Epstein, she would have a better sense of the man. She was quick to recognize a liar even when she couldn’t pinpoint the lie. But she was stuck here, with an Italian greyhound who moaned incessantly and a taskmaster in amniotic fluid. Lately, she and Crow had taken to calling the baby “Fifi La Pew,” one of those stupid couples jokes that come out of nowhere, only to stick. In fact, Crow was becoming enamored with “Fifi” as a possible name. Tess imagined trying to explain this to her parents. Here’s your granddaughter, Fifi Monaghan. It was a toss-up which name would make her conventional mother crazier.

The baby would be a Monaghan. Crow, who was almost too evolved, had decided that the child, as a girl, should have Tess’s surname. She could not deny that she was happy about this. Of course, her name was her father’s name. They could use her mother’s “maiden” name—Fifi Weinstein had quite the ring to it—but that was a man’s name, too, in the end. To find a true maiden name, one would have to go back to Lilith, Tess supposed. Poor Lilith, the original first wife, doomed to be forgotten.

She glanced again at the copy of the marriage license that Mrs. Blossom had left behind. Carole Epstein had been Carole Massinger. She plugged the latter into Google, finally scoring a hit on a Web site maintained by a freelance photographer. There was Carole Massinger, in a photograph taken at a wedding. The photo seemed a little fake, stagy, as photos in such settings often do, but it was definitely the woman Tess had seen through her binoculars. The hair was different, but she wore a dress of celery green, and brandished—did this woman coordinate everything?—a pale green cocktail. Her smile was broad, genuine. She was toasting the beaming groom and his bride, whom the photographer had helpfully identified as Don and Annette Epstein.

Chapter 4

Of course he married someone else he already knew, Tess,” Dorie Starnes said. “That’s what men do. Most men can’t function alone.”

“Still, it’s eerie, especially now that his second wife has disappeared—”

“Ah, but you’re wrong on that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’ll explain in all in due time. You don’t rush a master. You’ve made nice progress, with your laptop and your phone, but it’s nothing compared to what I can do with a couple of hours of computer time.”

When had Dorie Starnes, once an ignored and scorned IT grunt at the local newspaper, learned to speak with such emphatic authority—and on all subjects, yet, not just computers? But Tess knew, for she had been a part of Dorie’s transformation. When they met five years ago, Dorie had no sense of her own power. Tess had shown her how much she knew, how much potential she had, giving her the confidence to open her own research firm, now a thriving concern. Despite that, Tess didn’t even get a discount on Dorie’s not inconsiderable hourly rate. All she got were “bumping rights”—priority over Dorie’s other customers, without having to pay rush rates. Normally, that was all Tess needed, given that she could pass the cost on to her clients. But who was her client in this matter, who would reimburse her? The insane Italian greyhound was clearly indigent; Carole Massinger Esptein was missing—only not according to her husband. She would have to pay for Dorie’s services out of her own pocket. Sorry, Fifi. That’s a few dollars less for the college fund.

“Annette Epstein had been married to Don Epstein for almost five years when she died,” Dorie began, reading from her laptop. She would have preferred a PowerPoint presentation, no doubt, but Tess’s sun porch wasn’t set up for that.

“What was the cause?”

“Pneumonia was listed as the official cause, although that was actually a complication that resulted after her hospitalization. She died in an Anne Arundel hospital about eighteen months ago. Her husband sued, charging wrongful death. Hospital