The Shape of Dread

by Marcia Muller

  “About Tracy-”

  “I said enough. I don’t want to talk about her, and I especially don’t want to hear any more about what you suspect her of doing.”

  I picked up my untouched toddy. It was still warm. “Okay,” I said. “I really don’t have anything else to ask, anyway. But while I’m drinking this, would you humor me and do my favorite routine of yours-the one about Jake and Edna’s Rottweiler farm?”

  As I’d suspected, the request pleased him. When I left Café Comedie, my sides ached, and my eyes were damp from tears of laughter.

  The storm had blown out to sea by the time I reached my house around four. The truck with the Sheetrock had already arrived, and George sat on the front steps talking with the driver. As I approached, I had to smile, remembering how in awe I’d been of my professors when I started at U.C. Berkeley. What would that young woman have thought of this learned gentleman in the Stanford sweatshirt, faded jeans, and well-worn athletic shoes who was earnestly discussing the Giants’ chances in the upcoming season with a truck driver whose use of the word “fuckin’” was only surpassed by that of the phrase “shit, man”?

  I unlocked the side gate so the Sheetrock could be taken in through the rear, then led George inside the house. He looked around with interest, complimenting me on the front parlor-by far the nicest room, but seldom used. After owning the house for a few years, I’d finally concluded that I like to do my living as close to the kitchen as possible, and had bought a comfortable sofa and moved the TV to the dining room-formerly a repository for paint and building supplies.

  When we reached the kitchen at the rear of the house, I sat George down with a beer and sorted through the stacks of files on the table for the slim volume on creating a new identity that Amy Barbour claimed she’d found in Tracy’s bedroom bookcase. I thumbed through it to the page about establishing a mail drop and studied the notation in the margin. Then I handed it to George and said, “Is this Tracy’s handwriting?”

  He examined it at length and finally shook his head. “I can’t honestly say. It looks to be, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything she’s written.” He turned the book over, looked at its cover. “What is this, anyway?”

  “Amy Barbour says she found it in Tracy’s room. But if she did, it was planted there.” I removed Tracy’s sketchbook from the bottom of one of the piles and flipped it open, studying the handwriting. It varied from entry to entry, as most people’s will do, and there was a gradual change from beginning to end, presumably because the pages had been penned over a long period of time, but its style was distinctive and the individual letters remained fairly consistent. I sat down at the table, drew the sketchbook closer, and took the other book from George. As I flipped through it, I found a series of notations.

  After several minutes of study, I said, “I don’t think Tracy made any of the notes in this book.” I went around the table and laid the two open in front of him. “The capital L in Los Angeles is consistent with the way Tracy made hers. See this big upward loop, and the way the tail of the bottom one trails downward?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But the capital A-it’s not how she made hers, although it is how she made her lowercase As.”

  “Meaning?”

  “These notations could have been copied from a sample of her handwriting. Say someone had a letter from her, and it was signed ‘Love, Tracy.’ They would be able to get the L right. But if there weren’t any capital As in the letter, an inexperienced forger might just assume that she made them the way she made her lowercase As, only larger. An experienced forger wouldn’t make that assumption.”

  “So what you’ve got is someone on the amateurish side who marked this up to make it appear Tracy had used it to plan her own disappearance. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. My reopening the investigation must have been what prompted it, though, because the book wasn’t where Barbour says she found it when I searched last Thursday evening. Between then and when she gave it to me on Monday morning, I’d conducted a number of interviews; a lot of people knew about that.”

  “But what did the person who planted this book hope to accomplish?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. Finding this-if I’d accepted it as genuine-would only have convinced me I was onto something and made me work harder. So whoever put the book in Tracy’s room can’t have wanted me to drop the investigation. On the other hand, since I was already on the case, a person who wanted Tracy found wouldn’t have needed to go to such lengths.”

  “Unless whoever it was knows where she is, and there’s some clue in the notes in the margins.”

  It was a farfetched idea, but at that point I was willing to consider anything. I took the book back around the table and made a list of the notations on a legal pad. After looking it over and arranging them in various sequences, I shrugged and passed the pad over to George. “If there’s a clue here,” I said, “it’s damned obscure. I think these are nothing more than what the person who marked the book thought a reader who had studied it carefully might note.”

  He looked the pad over, did some rearranging of his own and finally nodded in agreement.

  “Another thing to consider,” I said, “is who had opportunity to plant it there. Who had access to that apartment? Amy Barbour. Marc Emmons. Any number of people who may have visited there. And Laura.”

  “I can’t imagine her doing such a thing. My wife is disturbed, but not irrational.”

  “Even if she were, this sort of thing doesn’t strike me as her style. My guess is that it was either Amy or Marc. She came forward with the book. He became quite angry when I suggested he’d planted it. They’re the logical ones to suspect, except…You know, I keep thinking of how Bobby Foster’s notebook-the one with the misspellings that matched those in the ransom note-turned up conveniently, too.”

  “The notebook actually belonged to Foster, though.”

  “That’s true.” Discouraged, I went to the refrigerator for a glass of wine, then slumped in my chair, frowning down at the table. When I looked up, I saw that George was reading the first entry in the sketchbook. My impulse was to snatch it away from him, but I resisted and merely waited.

  When he finished, he closed his eyes and rubbed his hand across them. “This is herself she’s describing, isn’t it?”

  “I think so. She only did that once-as her first entry.” The lie came out easily; there was no way I was going to let him read that final entry. I reached for the book, but he held on to it with both hands.

  “’The beloved father, for all his academic knowledge, was little better. Vague, fondly absent. Sometimes she thought him only half alive.’ Jesus, what did I do to my daughter? And to Laura? No wonder she was cold-she had a husband who wasn’t really there.”

  I didn’t speak for a moment, because I wanted to phrase what I was about to say very carefully. I knew that how I said it, even more than the actual sense of it, would be crucial to the future of our relationship.

  “You can only offer what you have at a given time,” I finally said. “I know that sounds simplistic, but you can only do and feel whatever your current capability is. And the situation, the flaws in it, are never wholly of your own making. Perhaps there was something in Laura and Tracy-in who and what they were and how they responded to you-that made you unable to act as a so-called proper husband and father should.”

  He considered that, then nodded and reached across the table for my hand. “It’s true. People change, depending on the situation and the others involved in it. I’m not like that any longer-vague or fondly absent. I won’t be that way in the future, either. That much I can promise you.”

  I entwined my fingers with his, leaned forward for his kiss. And the phone rang.

  It was Stan Gurski. “I have some information that I thought might interest you,” he said. “By way of a repay for your tip on McIntyre.”

  “Oh?” I glanced at George. He was pagi
ng through the sketchbook.

  “McIntyre was shot. Bullet was lodged in the ribcage, a .38. Makes it look premeditated.”

  “Why?”

  “When I called the owner of the cottage in Mexico Monday morning-easier to get his permission to enter and search the premises than to get a warrant- I routinely asked if any weapons were kept there. He said no; he’s strictly a fisherman. So we can assume whoever shot her brought the gun with them. Gun like that means business, too.”

  I was well aware of that. I own a .38 and consider it a necessary precaution for a woman whose job requires her to go into dangerous places and situations. But I don’t take the responsibility lightly, and I never carry it unless I’m fully prepared to use it.

  “Another thing,” Gurski said. “She was shot in the car.”

  “What?”

  “Uh-huh.” There was thinly veiled pride in his voice now. “When the ME reported the probable cause of death, I called SFPD. They still have the car impounded-capital case, appeals coming up. I asked them to look for other bullets. There was one, lodged in the door panel on the side where the bloodstains were. Our preliminary comparison shows it’s from the same gun as the one lodged in the remains. San Francisco’s finest sure screwed up on this one.”

  They had, in more than one way, and it unnerved me to think how close to the gas chamber that combination of mistakes had taken my client. I said, “Well, this completely invalidates Foster’s confession. I’ll pass the information along to his attorney.”

  The delivery-truck driver came through the door from the back porch, invoice in hand, looking for a check. I thanked Gurski for calling and terminated the conversation, then paid for the Sheetrock and went out to lock the side gate.

  When I came back to the kitchen, George had Tracy’s sketchbook open to the last page. He was staring into space, his face rigid with pain. My breath caught, and I stopped in the doorway.

  Slowly he turned his head toward me and said, “Why did you lie?”

  Perhaps he’d known his daughter better than he thought. Had I been in his place, I would not have recognized her-would not have wanted to recognize her-in that brief paragraph.

  I said, “I hoped you’d never have to know.”

  “But you know. And we can’t allow a secret of that magnitude to come between us.”

  I nodded and went to sit at the table.

  “I think,” he added, “that you’d better tell me everything you know about my daughter.”

  20

  Wednesday dawned clear and cold-one of those mornings following a rainstorm when everything looks hard edged, vivid, and clean. My mood didn’t fit the weather, however. By eleven I had swiveled away from my desk and was scowling out the bay window at the flat sprawl of the Outer Mission, wondering what right such a dingy neighborhood had to look so good in the sunlight. The desk behind me was stacked with papers and folders. Our holiday slowdown had ended, and our clients were once more suing and being sued, divorcing and getting arrested and appealing sentences. I no longer would have the luxury of pursuing the Foster/Kostakos investigation full-time; I’d give it until Monday morning, then juggle it with my other duties.

  I had to acknowledge that a good part of the reason for my low mood was the way George and I had left things the afternoon before. As he’d asked, I’d been frank with him about Tracy, and what I’d had to relate disturbed and depressed him. He left around six, saying he needed some time alone. That was the last thing I needed, so after microwaving a couple of burritos (or “nuking” them, as my nephew Andrew calls it), I left the house and embarked on what I knew would probably be a fruitless tour around the city: to the public library to look for the copy of the L.A. Times that Jane Stein had mentioned, where I found the microfilm room closed; to Amy Barbour and Marc Emmons’s buildings, in case they’d slipped past the police patrols; to Lisa McIntyre’s building, in the vain hope its manager might be home; to Café Comedie, to see if Larkey had heard from Emmons.

  While I was at the club, I ran into Kathy Soriano and asked if I might speak with her about Lisa and Tracy. She pleaded lack of time, vanished through the door marked Yes, and never came back. I asked Larkey if he would intercede and arrange an appointment for me with Kathy. He said he didn’t know how strong his influence was in those quarters lately, but he’d try.

  Eventually I ended up at the Remedy, kicking around my ideas on the case with Jack and Rae. All that did was leave me several dollars poorer (Rae was so broke Jack and I had to take turns paying for her beers) and as confused as before. When I went home, my bed seemed too cold, large, and lonely. I was a long time getting to sleep, and when the contractor arrived to start work at eight the next morning, I was barely coherent. Not a good start to the day.

  And now I’d had no word from George all morning. Larkey hadn’t phoned about the appointment with Kathy Soriano. Rae had received no response to any of her inquiries. My spirits were sagging so fast that I calculated they’d be about ankle level by noon.

  When the phone buzzed, I snatched up the receiver and growled something that sounded like one of those syllables in the crossword puzzle that correspond to the clue “kennel sound.”

  Larkey said, “What’s the matter-you caught a cold?”

  “Oh, Jay, hi. No-just a frog in my throat.”

  “They do better in ponds. Listen, I talked to Kathy, and she’s willing to see you if you can get to her house in Tiburon by noon.”

  “Tiburon by noon. No problem. What’s the address?” I scribbled it down, thanked him for arranging things, and left the office buoyed by the relief of a kid going out for recess.

  Kathy Soriano didn’t look very good that day. Her makeup was freshly applied, but there was a pallor under the tan base; her expensive sueded shirt had a grease spot on it, and her leather boots bore scuff marks. Her hands shook as if she might have a hangover, and her greeting was subdued.

  I found myself feeling sorry for her, even though she had a Jaguar sedan in the drive of the redwood-and-glass house set high above the bay. Her windows might overlook Angel Island and pine-studded hillsides, her living room might be filled with bronze sculptures and Imari porcelain, but I remembered what Larkey had said about the creditors closing in on the Sorianos. And I remembered Tracy’s brutally frank description of Kathy as a woman who jumped when those in power snapped their fingers, and who felt compelled to betray her steely-eyed husband. Kathy moved and spoke like a nervous, unhappy woman and seemed pathetically alone in the big house. And because of the attitude I had sensed in her toward others of her gender, she probably didn’t even have a woman friend whose shoulder she could cry on.

  She seated me facing a glass wall that overlooked a veritable forest and offered me a glass of wine, which I accepted. When she returned from the wet bar, I noticed her own drink looked to be something far more potent than wine. She drank half of it straight off, and gradually her color improved.

  “I’m sorry I ran out on you so abruptly last night,” she said in the tones of a little girl whose parents have told her to apologize. “I wasn’t feeling well, and I needed to get home.”

  “That’s too bad. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  She shrugged and looked away. The little girl had told her polite social lie but didn’t want to be bothered with elaborating on it.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I added. “I suppose Jay’s already told you that the body I thought was Tracy Kostakos’s is actually Lisa McIntyre’s?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m trying to find out when Lisa went up to the Napa River, and why. Jay tells me you and Rob drove her home the last night that any of you saw her.”

  “Yes, we did. It was raining pretty hard by then, so we took her right to her apartment building.”

  “I also understand that you went around to her apartment at Jay’s request the next week, and the manager told you she’d moved out.”

  “Skipped out is how she put it. Lisa didn’t give any notice, and she left a l
ot of her stuff there. She was also behind on her rent.”

  “What’s the manager’s name?”

  “…I don’t remember.”

  “I’ve been trying to contact her, but there’s never anyone home.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you, but it was a long time ago.”

  “No matter. Let’s go back to that Thursday night. Your husband’s executive assistant, Jim Fox, had come around to the club. The next day he found that his company car had been stolen off the lot.”

  “Yes, by Bobby Foster.”

  “I’ve recently found out that Tracy was the one who took it-”

  “That’s ridiculous!” She finished her drink quickly and went to the bar for another. “Tracy wouldn’t have done that. She was a nice girl. Everybody liked her. I even liked her, and let me tell you, I’m not too keen on women. She wouldn’t have ripped off one of our cars. She wouldn’t have needed to, with all her family’s money.”

  “Nevertheless, it appears she did. Would you go over the sequence of events that night for me?”

  “I’m not sure I understand. About the car or about Lisa?”

  “Both. Why don’t you start with when you arrived at the club.”

  “I was there from about ten o’clock on. Around closing Rob wanted to go over some papers about the real estate business with Jay. The place was practically empty by then, so Lisa changed out of her uniform and waited with me at the bar.”

  “How did she seem?”

  Kathy turned, drink in hand, bracing herself against the edge of the counter with her elbows. “You mean how did she act? Quiet. Lisa was always quiet around me, probably on account of me being an owner’s wife. And frankly, I didn’t encourage her. She was just a waitress, and not a very good one at that. She’d been closeted with Jay in his office for a while before Rob went back there, and Jay had probably chewed her out about something, as usual.”