The Shape of Dread

by Marcia Muller

  And he’d allowed Bobby Foster to be condemned to death while he kept his silence and reaped its profits. Damn the Marc Emmonses of this world!

  “And that’s it?” I asked harshly.

  Amy licked her dry lips and took another gulp of wine. “Not exactly. This is the bad part. It makes Marc feel responsible for her dying. After she left his place, he made a phone call.”

  “To?”

  “The person Trace had something on.”

  “Did he tell this person where she’d gone?”

  “I guess. He wouldn’t say.” But her expression told me she suspected he had.

  “The son of a bitch traded Tracy’s life for money.”

  Now Amy looked frightened. “He wouldn’t have!”

  Right, I thought. Trying to keep my voice level, I asked, “Do you have any idea who this person is?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if it was a man or a woman?”

  She shook her head.

  Well, there it was: the motive stronger than either male pride or anger that I’d needed to make my scenario work, with Jay Larkey cast as Tracy’s murderer. She’d found out something damning about him-possibly from the copy of the L.A. Times that Jane Stein had had at the airport-and decided to blackmail him with it.

  Blackmail, I thought. A vicious and stupid crime.

  Tracy had exhibited nastiness previously, but it had been of a petty variety, not really what one could term vicious. And she hadn’t been stupid. But she had been young. You do stupid things at that age. You dramatize yourself, think you’re invincible. You’re sure you can match your largely untried wits with those of the wiliest of the older generation. And it is that naïveté that makes you such easy prey….

  I said, “You’re sure that’s all Marc told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t told anyone else about this?”

  “Well…” She wriggled around on the chair, picked at her dirty, ragged fingernails. “I called Jay this afternoon.”

  “You…why?”

  “I was afraid for Marc. Being a comedian means more than anything else in the world to him; it’s all he’s ever wanted to do. I thought if I explain to Jay about the cops being after Marc, and how he’d had to hide out, Jay would forgive him for not showing up for work and not fire him. But I didn’t tell him everything, just that we were staying at the cottage and would be back soon.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That Marc should clear things up with the cops, and then they’d talk. I said I was going to get you and take you up there, so you could help us cut a deal.”

  “Did Marc know you planned to call Jay?”

  “I didn’t plan anything. It just occurred to me while I was sitting around the apartment waiting for you to get back.”

  “What time did you make the call?”

  “I guess sometime after two.”

  If Larkey had interpreted what Amy told him to mean Marc planned to trade what he knew about Tracy’s death for immunity from prosecution, he might have decided to drive to the river and attempt to dissuade him-either verbally or with force. There would have been ample time for that between her call and when the club opened. Stifling my alarm, I said, “Why don’t we drive up there and talk with Marc?”

  “Sure. Can I use the bathroom first?”

  “Of course,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. “Upstairs, on the right.”

  While she was up there, I went out to Ted’s desk and checked the chalkboard on the wall next to it for a message from Rae. There was none. Was she still trying to get hold of the copy of the Times? I wondered.

  The phone on the desk rang, startling in the postmidnight silence. I picked it up. “All Souls Legal Cooperative.”

  “Sharon?” George’s voice.

  “Hi. I tried to call you at home earlier, but you’d gone out.”

  “Sorry-my mistake. When I said home in my message, I meant Palo Alto, not the city.”

  Of course he would still consider the Palo Alto house home, and yet…”Is everything all right?”

  “Not really.” Now I recognized an undertone of despondency in his words. “Apparently the woman whose body they thought you found is still alive. The Napa sheriff’s department called to see if we could tell them how to locate Tracy’s earlier dental records. Unfortunately, they contacted Laura rather than me.”

  A chill crept across my shoulder blades. I should have called him from L.A., I thought, even though it meant breaking the news to him on the phone. And I should have repeated my warning about Laura being emotionally unstable to Gurski when I told him about finding McIntyre.

  “Oh, George, I’m sorry! How is she?”

  “Not good. She didn’t know anything about a body turning up; I’d kept it all from her. When she realized…well, it was a confrontation with reality that she didn’t need just now. She called me, and I got hold of her therapist and drove down here. They’re probably going to admit her for observation at the med center.”

  “This is my fault. I should have warned Gurski again-”

  “You knew about it?”

  “I flew to L.A. this afternoon, thinking I’d located Tracy. Only it was actually Lisa McIntyre. I was planning to tell you in person.”

  There was a long silence.

  Thoughts crowded my mind, each one jostling the previous one aside: what a terrible thing for him to go through…a terrible thing for Laura…he’ll blame me…I blame myself…this will ruin what we have between us…every time he looks at me, he’ll see the woman whose carelessness caused this….

  “Sharon? It’s okay. None of this is your fault.”

  “I feel responsible.”

  “Don’t.” In spite of his weariness and depression, the flatness of his voice was leavened by warmth. “I’ve got to go now, the therapist wants to talk with me. But I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  The connection broke, and I was left clutching a silent receiver. As I heard Amy coming down the stairs, I thought, I want to believe you, George, I really do,

  But why, why did you have to call Palo Alto “home”?

  26

  When Amy and I stepped through the front door, Rae was getting out of her old Rambler American, which she’d parked so it was blocking the driveway. She waved vigorously, her ratty brown coat billowing open, blue and gold scarf trailing to the ground on one side.

  “Got it!” she called.

  “The paper?”

  “Right.” She loped up the steps, obviously wired. “From a friend of Hank’s. Calls himself an archivist. What I call him is a pack rat. Weirdest-ass house you ever saw. Out in the Avenues, big place. The upstairs is full of reference books and two of the fattest, ugliest dogs in creation. I’m certain they’re descended from pigs. Downstairs is like the Catacombs, only the rooms are filled with newspapers, rather than bones. Before he let me take this, he practically made me swear on the heads of my unborn children to return it in good condition. So guard it with your life, or we’re all in deep shit.”

  She thrust the paper at me. I took it and said, “You’re a genius!”

  Amy was staring at Rae as if she found her fascinating. I made introductions and explained where we were bound, omitting my concern for Emmons’s safety.

  “You want me to go along?” Rae asked.

  “Is there room for three in your car?” I asked Amy.

  “I was kind of hoping we could take yours. Marc’s isn’t too reliable; it was acting up on the way down here.”

  “And neither is mine,” Rae said, “so that lets me out.” She paused, then added, “Awful about the fire at Café Comedie, huh? I heard about it on the radio. Did Jay Larkey…?”

  “Probably.” But I had begun to wonder about that. The bartender had said the explosion was in back near Larkey’s office, but he hadn’t actually placed his boss on the scene at the time. And there was also the matter of the male phone caller who had hung up on Hank after asking if I was back from Los An
geles and if Amy had contacted me yet. That combination of facts was one which only Larkey had possessed. “Are you going to be up for a while?” I asked Rae.

  “For hours. I’m too wired to sleep.”

  “If anyone calls for me, will you tell him I’m still in L.A.? And if he asks about Amy, say she’s still here but asleep.”

  “Sure.” Her eyes were curious.

  Quickly I motioned to Amy and we went down the hill. I wanted her to drive so I could look through the Times, but she said she couldn’t handle a stick shift. I considered checking the features section right then and there, but my worry about Emmons was strong enough that I decided not to waste any more time in getting to the river. Whatever Tracy had seen in the paper might not hold any significance for me; better to wait and let Emmons tell me his story-if he was in any condition to.

  There was little traffic on the freeway, and we made good time, passing Richmond by one-thirty. Flame billowed from a remote tower at the refinery on the shore; the faintly illuminated storage tanks hulked on the dark hillsides. Amy was uncharacteristically silent, her head turned away from me as she stared out the side window.

  At the other end of the bridge over the Carquinez Strait, the toll taker yawned as she accepted my dollar bill. The neon of the frontage-road businesses in Vallejo was softened by a light mist. Amy stirred and pointed to a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. “Can we stop? I need to use the bathroom.”

  What was it with her and bathrooms? I thought irritably. Probably nervous, or maybe she wants to do some coke. Nothing would surprise me anymore.

  I pulled off the freeway, drove to the coffee shop, and parked in front. “Don’t take too long.”

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “I’ll wait here.” As she got out, I took the copy of the Times from where I’d set it on the rear carrying seat and switched on the car’s dome light.

  The features sections was called “View.” I turned to it first. The piece Tracy had used to demonstrate her new comedy technique-about the woman who built the twenty-thousand-dollar doghouse-dominated the front page. To its left was what looked to be a regular entertainment column; below it was an article on the spring fashions. I turned to the inside: a personality sketch of a New York-based cartoonist, with ads below the fold. Similar arrangement on the facing page, with a horoscope and Dear Abby.

  Of course Tracy might not have been looking at the View section when she saw whatever it was that had given her such a turn. Perhaps it was a straight news item.

  Page four contained a continuation of the entertainment column and a cartoon strip, but a piece on page five caught my eye. Titled “Unsolved Crime of the Week,” it appeared to be a regular syndicated feature describing an open police file and asking readers to contact their newspaper should they have knowledge of the perpetrator. That week’s crime was a five-year-old arson-murder in Fort Myers, Florida, on the Gulf Coast.

  I skimmed the article quickly. The arson had occurred at a shopping-and-entertainment complex in the affluent resort area, at three in the morning during the height of the winter tourist season. There was no question that the fire had been set: traces of a liquid accelerant-gasoline-were found in a crawl space below the level of the blaze.

  Due to the lateness of the hour, only one person had been killed. The charred remains were initially thought to be those of the complex’s developer, Warren S. Howard, but a positive identification could not be made. And in the weeks that followed the fire, a number of little-known facts about Howard came to light: he was dangerously overextended and deeply in debt; several of the stores and restaurants in the complex had failed to renew their leases; he’d tried to raise capital by selling off a tract of land he owned near the Fort Myers airport, but the growth rate in that area had not been as projected, and there were no takers; various liens against his property and lawsuits had been filed.

  A real estate developer on the brink of bankruptcy. A fire.

  The police began to suspect that Howard had set fire to the complex in order to fake his own death and escape his creditors. The body found in the ashes, they theorized, could have been a derelict or other person who would not be missed, whom Howard had lured inside and knocked unconscious or perhaps drugged. The theory was given further credence when Howard’s wife, Melinda, who had been trying unsuccessfully to collect on his personal and business insurance, suddenly disappeared from the area. And it was confirmed when the charred remains were identified as those of an old man who had run away from a nursing home in nearby Cape Coral the previous December.

  I let out my breath in a long sigh, my fingers dampening the newsprint where I grasped it.

  Warren and Melinda Howard sounded like two people I knew. But how had Tracy recognized them from this account? I had tonight’s fire at Café Comedie to lead me to make the connection. What had told her…?

  And then I noticed that the piece was continued on the following page. I flipped it over, found a plea for information and a photograph of the Howards.

  Melinda Howard was at least fifty: short, plump, with frizzily permed blond hair and glasses. Warren Howard looked older: his hair was white, the flesh under his eyes deeply pouched. He could have stood to lose fifty or sixty pounds.

  People I’d never seen before.

  I wanted to scream in frustration. It fit: a real estate developer and his wife, a near bankruptcy, a fire. It was perfect.

  And all wrong.

  Inside the coffee shop I could see Amy, chatting with the cashier, a take-out container in hand. My irritation level rose to the boiling point. Why was she buying something to drink when I’d told her to hurry? I leaned on the horn.

  Amy looked my way, exchanged a few more pleasantries with the cashier, then came toward the door. She walked slowly, juggling her purse with the paper cup and fishing around inside it. Before she got to the car, she took out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, stuffed it into her mouth, and dropped the wrapper on the ground.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she said.

  I gritted my teeth. Amy closed the car door, snapping her gum.

  “What’s that?” she asked, motioning at the paper with her cup and spilling cola on her hand.

  I wanted to crumple the Times and hurl it behind the seat. In the interests of Rae’s unborn children, I restrained myself.

  Amy leaned over, snapping her gum again and breathing wintergreen on me. If she was going to make sounds like a ruminant all the way to the cottage, I’d probably throttle her.

  “Hey, that’s funny,” she said.

  “What’s funny?” I elbowed her back onto her own side of the car.

  “That old guy.” Her finger stabbed at the photo in the paper. “He looks like he could be Rob Soriano’s father.”

  I knocked her hand away and scrutinized the picture. Now I saw what Tracy-who had spent a great deal of time observing others-had discerned instantly. The only thing that surprised me was that Amy had caught it before I did.

  The man’s stiff military bearing was the same as Soriano’s, as were the deep lines that bracketed his mouth. The wavy white hair could easily have been clipped short and dyed a uniform brown. The pouches under the eyes, upon closer examination, looked to be the product of heredity rather than age; such things were surgically correctable, and any irregularities could be masked by glasses. Weight could be lost, muscles toned. And Melinda, who in no way resembled Kathy? A wife who had died or been discarded.

  Warren Howard was Rob Soriano.

  Rob Soriano, not Jay Larkey, had murdered Tracy.

  I folded the paper and put it back on the carrying seat. As I flicked off the dome light and started the car, I said to Amy, “I want you to watch for cops, so we don’t get stopped. We need to get to the cottage in a hurry.”

  27

  There were no cars parked in front of the Barbour place or in the turnaround where the road ended, and only one tucked into the trees by the driveway of the farthest house. Lights showed over there, but the Barbour cot
tage was dark. I pulled the MG next to the vine-covered fence and shut off the engine.

  I said to Amy, “Are you sure Marc said he’d wait for us?”

  “Where would he-oh, you mean because there’re no lights. The shutters keep them from showing. We were pretty sure the cops wouldn’t come by, but we left them closed just in case.”

  I got out of the car, motioning for her to do the same. The night was crisp, a strong wind blowing off the river. A full moon hung overhead; in its rays the vast plain belonging to the salt company looked glacial. I stood still for a moment, listening to the muted rippling of the water and rustling of vegetation. In the distance a dog howled mournfully.

  Amy came up beside me; I could smell her wintergreen gum. She said, “I’m scared.”

  “Of what? There’s no reason.” But I knew why: there was a wrongness about the place, because of the evil thing that had happened her. I myself felt a chill along my backbone.

  She took out a key and unlocked the padlock on the hasp, removed it, and pushed open the side of the gate whose hinges had not given way. It swung all the way back and rested against a pyracantha bush. Amy shoved it closed again and started through the thicket.

  The bright moonlight helped us find our way. On the other side of the bushes I made out thin lines of light where there were gaps around the shutters on the windows overlooking the cottage’s front porch. Its sagging roof was outlined against the sky, chimney slightly atilt. On the porch the dilapidated wicker furniture hunched in the shadows; the glider moved fitfully in the wind, bumping the wall behind it.

  The sense of wrongness was stronger here. Reflexively I patted my shoulder bag, wishing I had my gun. In the past I’d owned two, kept one at home and the other in the glovebox of the car, which I’d had fitted with a special lock. But a few months ago, someone had broken into the MG and gotten the compartment open. Later I’d decided against replacing the gun. Now I wondered if that had been a wise decision.