Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (55 page)

After the chill outside, the office seemed excessively warm, and
even more disorderly than the first time I'd seen it. Several cardboard
file boxes were stacked in the center of the floor, a wastebasket full
of what looked to be receipts on top of them. Although Larkey was again
clad in a sweat suit—a natty red and yellow one this time—he obviously
hadn't been using the exercise bike, since it was draped with a sport
coat, a dress shirt, two ties, and a pair of pants. While I shed my
trenchcoat, he looked around helplessly, then picked up a pile of
newspapers and magazines from a chair and dumped them in a corner. I
sat there, and he took his desk chair, propping his feet on the
littered blotter.

"So," he said, "what's happening?"

"The Napa County coroner has made an ID on those bones. They're
definitely Lisa Mclntyre's."

He grimaced, as if experiencing sudden pain. "Poor kid. I'm sorry.
What the hell was she doing up there, anyway?"

"I'm not sure. Do you have a picture of her—in her personnel file,
perhaps?"

He started to shake his head, then took his feet off the desk and
rummaged in a lower drawer. "The staff gave me a birthday party that
year. Somebody took pictures. There might be… here's one—Lisa at the
bar with Tracy."

I got up and took it from his extended hand. They sat on stools,
half turned toward the camera. Tracy's expression was wary, perhaps
because she was anticipating the glare of the flashbulb. Lisa smiled
boldly. She had a heart-shaped face with a turned-up nose; her light
brown hair fell smoothly from a center part, then belled out in soft
curls that touched her
shoulders. The shrewd, knowing expression in her eyes was strangely
familiar; Tracy had caught it perfectly in her portrayal of Ginny the
waitress.

I wasn't sure why I'd wanted to see a picture of the dead woman;
perhaps I'd hoped to erase my mental image of that pitiful jumble of
bones by seeing her in the flesh. I surprised myself further by asking,
"Can I keep this?"

"Help yourself. I've got no use for it." As I tucked it in my bag,
he added, "What gave you the idea it might be Lisa up there?"

"Just the timing of her disappearance."

"I wonder how she got there, or even knew where it was. It's
isolated, and you've got to know which fork in the road to take—"
Abruptly he broke off, realizing what he'd implied.

"Tracy had taken you there, then?"

He made a motion, as if to erase my question.

"Jay, I know you were having an affair with her. Apparently everyone
knew at the time."

There was a knock at the door. Mike the bartender entered with our
toddies. Larkey waited until he handed them around and departed before
speaking. "Yeah, I guess everyone did know. I didn't bother to hide it."

"Why would you have reason to? Affairs between men in their prime
and women of Tracy's age aren't uncommon."

"Especially in this business. Maybe that's why I don't want to own
up to it now. It was such a trite situation. Older man clinging to the
fringes of the business and needing reassurance. Young woman on her way
up, thinking he can help her. An old, old story."

"I'm sure Tracy didn't see it that way. From what I hear, she
genuinely cared for you."

His mouth twitched, and he quickly drank some of his toddy. "No," he
said, "she didn't. But that's got nothing to do
with… anything."

"Can I ask you another personal question?"

"About Tracy?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead."

"Did you ever give her money?"

"You mean besides what I paid her to perform here? Yeah, I did."

"Why?"

"On my part that should be obvious. I thought if I gave her money I
wouldn't lose her. But it was more than that; the kid was needy." To my
surprised look he added, "Not in a monetary sense. Her family's rich.
But she was angry with her parents on a very deep level and badly
wanted to be independent."

"And she couldn't get by on what she earned? Jane Stein told me her
contract with you was 'lucrative.'"

"She could have gotten by if she hadn't been so… needy is the only
way I can describe it. Tracy had to buy things—clothes, possessions.
They filled an emotional gap. It was the same way with applause from
the audience. But when she got either, the applause or the things, it
was never enough. Fifteen minutes later, its affect would have dulled,
the way the affect of a fix does for a junkie. Then she'd start needing
all over again. There sure as hell must have been something missing in
her childhood, to make her that way."

I thought of the first character in the sketchbook, whom I'd
suspected might be Tracy herself. The mother had never hugged her; the
father had barely seemed alive. And I thought of George's description
of all the years of Tracy's upbringing—those gray years that he
scarcely remembered. A desolate feeling welled under my breastbone: for
Laura, who was incapable of expressing her love; for George, who hadn't
been able to feel; for Tracy, who had starved emotionally.

Larkey was watching me curiously. I pushed the thoughts aside and
asked, "Did she take you up to the river often?"

"Only twice. It was someplace she liked to get away to, and her
roommate let her use it whenever she wanted. I hated it; it was too
rustic for me. But I went along… well, for the same reason I gave her
money."

"Do you suppose she took other people there?"

He ran his sharp little teeth over his lower lip. "Why do you ask
that?"

"As you pointed out, Lisa would have had to know how to find it.
Unless she went with Tracy that night."

"There's no way she would have," he said flatly, shaking his head.

I studied his face, trying to gauge what he knew about Lisa and
Tracy. Probably not the whole story, I thought. It was hardly something
Tracy would have confided in him—nor Lisa, for that matter.

After a moment he added, "Besides, the logistics aren't right. Tracy
left here right after her last performance—that was established at
Foster's trial. Lisa worked until closing at two. I can confirm that."

"So she drove up there after her shift ended—"

"No. She didn't own a car."

"Are you sure of that?"

He nodded. "A lot of times I drove her to her bus stop after work.
That night it was raining, and normally I would have driven her, but I
was… tied up here. So the Sorianos took her instead, drove her all the
way home, since her apartment was on their way to the Golden Gate
Bridge."

"You're certain about that?"

He nodded.

"Lisa could have borrowed a car after she got home. Or the next day.
The time of her death can't be established."

He frowned, apparently realizing the direction in which my questions
were leading. "You're not implying that Tracy… ?"

"It's a possibility."

"I refuse to believe that!"

"I don't want to, myself. But I don't know what else to think."

Larkey stood up and began to move restlessly around the office,
snatching up the clothing from the exercise bike and wadding it
together, then dropping it on the floor. He turned around, banged into
the stack of file boxes. The wastebasket of receipts teetered; he
grabbed for it, and it fell to the floor, scattering bits of paper like
snow on the carpet.

"Shit!" For a moment I thought he would get down on his knees and
begin gathering them up, but instead he kicked furiously at them.
"Goddamn things, what's the use, anyway?"

"I'm sorry?"

He flung out a hand at the littered floor. "Stuff for a meeting with
Rob and my tax man tomorrow afternoon. I don't know why I even bother.
The losses alone'll save me from forking over."

"The club's losing that much money?"

"The club? Christ, no. It's the fucking real estate business that's
killing me."

"Atlas Development? I talked with Rob Soriano and got the exact
opposite impression."

"Ah, that's just hype. Rob probably thinks you've got some bucks to
invest. Truth is, we're up to our asses in loans we can't pay off;
we're stuck with property we can't give away, much less rent. People
are holding off on buying or renting in SoMa until the Planning
Commission comes up with guidelines for its development. Rob and I are
barely treading water these days."

"But he seems so confident—"

"That's just his way, but don't let it fool you. He and Kath are up
to the limits on all their credit cards, their house is
triple-mortgaged, and the lenders are closing in on them. We've still
got the club, but if he had his way, that'd be mortgaged up to the
hilt, too. I'm not all that worried, though; Rob's led a charmed life.
He's one of that kind that always land on their feet."

"You've known him a long time?"

"Awhile. I met him when I was playing Vegas, on my way down. We hit
it off, maybe because he didn't give me the bullshit celebrity
treatment. He knew I was on my way out, and he let me in on a couple of
land deals he had going there. They worked out. He'd been a developer
other places— Florida, Texas—and knew what he was doing. I cleared
enough to buy this club."

"And he went into partnership with you?"

Larkey shook his head, sitting down on the edge of the desk, one
foot scuffing rhythmically at the scattered receipts. "For the first
couple of years this place was my baby. But things weren't going so
good. This was a rougher neighborhood then, people didn't want to come
down here. I was about to lose everything when Rob showed up—with his
new wife, the toothsome Kathy—and bailed me out again. When things got
going here, we formed Atlas."

There was something about his tone when he spoke of Kathy… I thought
of Tracy's description of Soriano's wife in the sketchbook, how she
indulged in affairs as petty revenge against her husband. "You and Rob
have had your ups and downs," I said. "Are you close friends?"

"Not friends, but—until recently—we did good business together."

"What about Kathy? Is she a friend?"

He looked surprised, then flashed his foxy little grin. "You're a
nosy one, Ms. McCone. I suppose it goes with the territory. Yes, she's
a friend. He doesn't care. I don't care. And it makes the lady feel
better. Now, I think that's enough of
personal questions."

"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."