The Shape of Dread Read online

  “Your hand’s like ice,” she said. “Damned wind, I hate it. Come on in, I’ll give you a drink.”

  I followed her inside. The door led into a living room with the obligatory picture windows facing the East Bay. The white drapes were closed against the fog. The walls were also white, but the carpet was a hideous mustard; someone had tried to hide part of it with a Mexican rug, but I could still see enough-spills and stains included-to make me wince. The furnishings were surprisingly good: a white leather sofa and matching chair, tasteful glass-and-chrome tables; plain ceramic lamps; an elaborate entertainment center. There was a single wall decoration over the couch, one of those works that is part collage, part oil painting, and totally expensive.

  As I took off my jacket, Amy Barbour disappeared around a corner into a dining area. I dropped the jacket on the sofa and followed, starting when I came face-to-face with myself. The entire end wall of the dining area was a mirror.

  Amy turned, smiled at my reaction. “Pretty shocking, isn’t it? You can imagine how awful it makes you feel at seven in the morning. It’s the landlord’s idea of how to make the place look larger, so he can justify the ridiculous rent.” She went through the archway into a small kitchen and sniffed at a pot on the stove.

  I said, “I suppose he picked out the carpet, too?”

  “I think he got it cheap because nobody else wanted it. It’s being replaced in January. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with this time.” She fetched a pair of glasses. “Whatever it is, it still won’t go with Trace’s nice furniture.”

  “Most of the things belong to Tracy, then?”

  “Yeah. She was the one with the bucks.” Amy spoke with no resentment, as if it were good fortune that had befallen both of them. “I’ve got some mulled wine here. Would you like some?”

  I sighed mentally, nodded, and watched as she ladled it from the pot. In the past three weeks or so I’d had about every variety of mulled wine known to mankind. Something bizarre happens to people at the holidays: they seize perfectly drinkable-even good-wine and put strange substances into it. Cloves, orange peel, cinnamon, and-for all I know-parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. They make gallons of it, more than any crowd could reasonably be expected to drink, and two days before the new year they’re still serving what’s left over from December fifteenth.

  Amy handed me a glass and looked expectant. I took a sip, found it palatable in my present frozen state, and murmured compliments. Then we went back to the living room and sat at opposite ends of the leather sofa. Amy curled her stockinged feet under her and twisted so she could look at me. “So,” she said, “who’re you working for-crazy Mrs. K?”

  “Laura Kostakos, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I just kind of assumed….”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she’s so fanatical about Trace. The stuff about her still being alive. This apartment, the whole schtick.” She ran a hand through her artichoke-leaf hair. “Don’t get me wrong-if Trace did turn up, I’d probably start going to church again. But she won’t. She’s dead. I don’t like it, but I can live with it. Unlike her mother. Who is totally…do you know her?”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “Well, you see? She’s really insane. Completely…you’re looking kind of tolerant, like maybe you don’t agree with me.”

  “I didn’t mean to. Tell me more about her.”

  “Well, the main thing that’s weird is about this apartment. Don’t get me wrong-I benefit. I like having a place like this all to myself. I can have my boyfriend here, no hassle. And I get the use of this nice furniture, all the kitchen stuff.” She paused, seeming to hear herself. “That doesn’t mean I don’t miss Trace. I do, dammit.”

  “I’m sure you do. About Mrs. Kostakos?...”

  “Sorry. I tend to run on. Anyway, Mrs. K is creepy. She gives me full run of the place, except I can’t go in Trace’s room, not even to dust.”

  “I guess she just wants it the way it was before.”

  “Oh, I can understand that. If Trace ever did come back, she wouldn’t want to find out I’d been pawing through her stuff. Not that I would, but Mrs. K doesn’t really know me. So she keeps the door locked.”

  So far she hadn’t told me anything that seemed so peculiar. I was about to comment to that effect, when she added, “What’s creepy is the way she comes up here and sits for hours in that room.”

  “When does she do that?”

  “Every Friday, at the same time of day that she used to have lunch with Trace.”

  But Laura Kostakos had told me she hardly ever left her house. And I knew from my files that Amy worked five days a week at a place where they silk-screened T-shirts. “How do you know that?”

  “The way I caught on, on Fridays I would come home from work and the place would smell funny, like gardenias. Then, one day about a year ago, I got sick and came home early. Mrs. K was just leaving the building, and I realized the smell was that perfume she wears. Pretty strong stuff. The next Friday, I left the answering machine off and kept calling the apartment from work. Around one-thirty she answered.” Amy paused dramatically. “And do you know what she said?”

  I shook my head.

  “She said, ‘Tracy, is that you?’ You see what I mean-creepy.”

  Somehow I doubted Amy had enough imagination to make up such a story. I said, “Are you sure she comes every Friday?”

  “Yep. You go in that room, you can smell the gardenias.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to go in there, that she keeps it locked.”

  Amy looked mildly abashed. “The locks on these doors, there’s a little tool you can use to open them from the outside.”

  “And you’ve used it.”

  “Only because I wonder what she does in there-at first I thought maybe she’d set up a shrine or something.”

  “And had she?”

  “No, nothing like that. All she’d done was move a rocker that used to be out here-I wondered at the time why she’d taken it away-in there by the window. I guess she just sits there, waiting.”

  I compressed my lips and frowned, concerned for Laura Kostakos.

  Amy said, “Yeah, that’s how I feel. It’s creepy, coming home on Fridays and knowing she’s been in there…just waiting. I mean, I never know what to expect. What if she does something?”

  “Like what?”

  She flung a hand out wildly, almost knocking her wine glass over. “How do I know what a crazy person will do? She might kill herself. I’d come home, find her. Yuck. Or what if she turns violent? I’d walk in, and it’d be all over.”

  In spite of her dramatics, I sensed Amy was genuinely afraid. “I don’t think she’s violent or self-destructive,” I said, “but maybe it would be good to talk to someone about it. Have you thought of contacting Tracy’s father? After all, he’s a psychology professor.”

  “Old George? Forget it.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s just…all psychologists are weird.”

  Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t talked to him, I thought. If he didn’t already know about his wife’s weekly vigils in Tracy’s room, it would be best if he heard it from someone more tactful and less prone to histrionics than Amy. “Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll ask him about it. If he thinks there’s potential danger, you should probably move out of here.”

  Amy sipped wine, her gaze skipping around the room, as if taking note of all the possessions she would lose use of by such an action. Then she sighed. “Maybe it would be for the best. Maybe it’s time I move in with my boyfriend. If he’ll let me.”

  “Would you mind if I look at Tracy’s room?”

  “Why should I? The only one who might mind is Mrs. K, and she’ll never know. By the way, if you’re not working for her, who is it? I started to ask, and then I forgot.”

  “Bobby Foster’s lawyer.”

  Her eyes widened and she became very still. After a moment she said
, “Bobby. God, it’s so awful!”

  “You know him?”

  “Not well, but to even have an acquaintance on death row…I’ve had bad dreams about that.”

  She was beginning to wear on me. I stood and moved toward the hallway to the bedrooms. “So has Bobby.”

  Amy opened her mouth, shut it, and gave me a reproachful look. Then she followed me, wineglass in hand.

  Two of the doors off the hallway were open: to a bathroom midway down and a small bedroom to the left at the end. The door to the right room was closed. I said, “Where’s the tool for unlocking this?”

  “Here in the linen closet.” Amy rummaged around and handed me a slender metal probe.

  I fitted it into the slot in the doorknob, pushed, and the lock snapped open. As it did, I realized there was something wrong with Amy’s story about Laura Kostakos. “How does Mrs. Kostakos get into this room if it’s kept locked?” I asked.

  Amy hesitated, frowning. “I never thought about that. The door locks if you set the button before you close it, but there’s no key other than…” She looked at the probe in my hand.

  “She must use this, then. Is it always kept in the same place?”

  “Yes, sort of. But…oh shit!”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes when I’ve gone in there, I’ve put it back on a different shelf. If she realizes I’ve been using it to check out Trace’s room, she’ll throw my ass out of here!”

  “She’s probably known all along and doesn’t care. She may even be aware you know of her visits.” I turned back to the door, opened it, and felt for a light switch. Behind me, Amy was silent.

  When I flicked the switch, an overhead fixture came on. The room, its dim light revealed, was fairly good sized-about twelve feet square-but so crammed with furniture and possessions that it seemed a cell. A king-sized waterbed covered with a white goosedown comforter stood against the wall perpendicular to the window. Part of the window itself was blocked by a huge antique armoire; the rocking chair Amy had mentioned stood in front of the unobstructed portion. The dresser was laden with cosmetics and jewelry in clear acrylic stack boxes; the floor space between it and the bed was taken up by a stand with a portable TV and VCR, in spite of there being similar equipment in the living room.

  I stepped all the way inside. Through the closed window I could hear the swish of tires on the pavement of Upper Market; headlight beams slid over the bedroom’s walls and ceilings. That, I thought, was the price tenants paid for the view: bedrooms on the street side, inconducive to sleep.

  The bed was piled with pillows. There was no room for nightstands, so the things one usually keeps there were on the floor: a clock radio, water carafe and glass, Kleenex box, TV remote control. In addition to these commonplace items, I noted several paperback biographies of celebrities, yellowing copies of Variety, and an ashtray filled with what looked to be marijuana roaches. I went to the closet-a large one in which my wardrobe would have taken up maybe a third-and found it crammed with clothing. The shelf above the pole was stacked with sweater boxes, the floor covered with a jumble of shoes. The armoire was in a similar state-the clothing jammed so tightly that it would have required ironing before it could be worn. On top of the armoire sat a big stuffed unicorn; it stared haughtily down at me.

  Amy lounged in the doorway, sipping wine. “Trace was into things,” she said.

  “I can see that.”

  “She loved to shop, was always charging stuff. Clothes, cosmetics, furniture, stuff for the apartment.”

  Laura Kostakos said Tracy had never abused their credit cards. What did “abuse” mean to people of their financial standing? And what about last year, when Tracy had established her own credit? She couldn’t have been earning enough to pay cash for everything, and most companies place low limits on new cards.

  Amy seemed to take my silence for disapproval of her friend’s spending habits. She said, “Look, Trace might have been into things, but she was a good person. She was generous, always buying people presents. And she only bought quality. The stuff for the kitchen, for instance-there’s a Sharp microwave, a Cuisinart, a whole set of Calphalon cookware. The stainless is Dansk-”

  “Amy, would you mind if I look over the room alone? I could concentrate better.”

  She shut her mouth abruptly, turned, and strode back toward the living room.

  Touchy, I thought, looking after her. Touchy, and quite mercurial. I wasn’t sure about the public defender’s claim that Amy hadn’t told everything she knew at Bobby Foster’s trial, but there was more to her than initially met the eye.

  I searched the room carefully, taking my time. Few things that I found interested me, except for a thick notebook in which Tracy had written sketches of characters she portrayed in her comedy routines. I set it aside to take with me; it would help me get to know her better, and I could copy it and return the original before Laura Kostakos realized it was gone.

  What did interest me was how few things of a personal nature I found. There were no letters, postcards, souvenirs, diaries, not even an appointments calendar. Of course, I thought, they might have been removed by the police or Laura Kostakos. Or perhaps Tracy had not been one to save things or keep a journal. Finally, noting it was after eight o’clock, I took the notebook containing the character sketches and returned to the living room.

  Amy slumped on the couch, working on another glass of wine. When I came in, she looked up sulkily.

  I said, “I’d planned to ask if you’d noticed whether any of Tracy’s things are missing, but after seeing her room, I can’t imagine how you could have.”

  “Yeah.” Her good humor returned-marginally. “Given what she owned, there was no way to keep track.”

  “I gather the two of you were good friends.”

  “The best.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Through a roommate referral service-one that matches people up according to their preferences. Where they want to live, how much they can pay, whether they smoke or not. You know.”

  I knew. Such services could be iffy, but apparently this one had done well by Amy and Tracy.

  I ran through my routine questions-some of which I already knew the answers to, ones that merely served as checks on Amy’s truthfulness. She answered them all without hesitation: they had lived together for two years before Tracy’s disappearance; they’d squabbled about the usual things, such as boyfriends staying overnight too often; they’d confided in each other, given parties and dinners together, played racquetball at a health club a couple of times a week. As far as Amy knew, Tracy had had no serious personal problems; her career had come before anything else.

  “She was all set for a big breakthrough,” Amy said. “Her appearances at Café Comedie were terrific exposure, and Jay-that’s Jay Larkey, the owner-had renewed her contract for another six months. She’d landed a couple of TV commercials, and a Hollywood agent had agreed to take her on. She could have been another Carol Burnett, only then this…thing happened to her.”

  “You say ‘this thing,’ but I got the impression before that you’re convinced she’s dead.”

  “I say ‘thing’ because I can’t stand to use the other word. But like I told you, I know she’s dead, and I can live with it. Bobby killed her. He confessed, didn’t he?”

  “There are a lot of discrepancies in that confession.”

  “But there was evidence.”

  “Tracy’s mother thinks she disappeared deliberately and faked the evidence. Tracy said some things that make her believe-”

  “What things?”

  “That she felt she had turned into a bad person. That circumstances were forcing her to do things she never would have before.”

  Amy drew her feet up on the sofa and locked her arms around her knees. “God,” she whispered.

  I looked inquiringly at her, but she shook her head, refusing to elaborate.

  “You testified for the prosecution at the trial,” I said. “Bobby’s publi
c defender thought you were holding something back.”

  She tightened her grip on her knees. “What could I hold back? All I did was testify that Trace was supposed to wake me when she came home that night, but didn’t.” Her voice had changed, gone high and shrill. “All I said was that she was dependable, like clockwork. I don’t know anything else. And it wasn’t my testimony that put Bobby where he is-it was his own confession.”

  “You sound as if you feel bad about testifying against him, though.”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Do you?”

  “Look, I don’t like having had any part in sending somebody to the gas chamber, if that’s what you mean. But I told the truth, and I wasn’t holding anything back. There isn’t anything I could have held back.”

  I didn’t reply. After about thirty seconds of silence, Amy squirmed uncomfortably, her eyes still focused on the opposite side of the room.

  I said, “What about the things Tracy told her mother? Do you have any idea what she might have meant?”

  “Look, everybody knows Mrs. K is crazy. She probably made the whole thing up.” But Amy’s voice was even more shrill now; hearing what her roommate had told her mother had frightened her.

  “I don’t think so, Amy. And that doesn’t really answer my question. Do you have any idea-”

  “No!” She unwound her arms from her knees and stood. “It’s way after eight, and I’ve given you a lot of my time. My boyfriend’s…I have a date. You’ll have to go now.”

  I regarded her levelly for a moment, and she again looked away from me. Finally I stood, putting on my jacket. When I picked up Tracy’s sketchbook, I expected her to protest my taking it, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  6

  Café Comedie was located on South Park, in the area known as SoMa, or South of Market. At a little after nine, I drove along Bryant Street, past the Hall of Justice. The offices of the bail bondsmen were brightly lighted and doing a brisk business. I smiled as I passed my favorite: Cable Car Bail Bonds, housed in a spiffy little trailer that I just knew had to also be the sales office of the used-car lot next door. I’ve never been able to decide which of the establishments I’d patronize were I to require their services; Cable Car has a nice San Francisco ring (and is probably a favorite with tourists), but what greater feeling of security could be engendered than by taking one’s business to Dad’s Bail Bonds, just down the way?