by Janet Dawson
“You didn’t have to live with him long. Your aunt prevailed in the custody hearing.”
“You helped with that,” Emily said. “You and Mr. Seville. That’s when you got him arrested. When the court turned me over to my aunt, I hoped that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. He came after my aunt. I was afraid he’d kill her.”
Emily had pulled all the seeds from the cone. She looked at the denuded stub in her hand, then tossed it away, over the deck railing.
“He should have been charged with killing my mother. At least he went to jail for being a thief. And for stalking my aunt. The last time I saw him, I told him I hated him. You should have seen his face. I knew then he was crazy.”
She turned and looked at me, fear vying with anger on her young face. “He’s not human. He’s evil. You don’t know what it’s been like to live this way. I hoped they’d keep him locked up forever.”
“The parole system doesn’t work that way.”
“I know. But I can’t believe they let him out this soon.”
“You and your aunt should have been notified that he was up for parole.”
“We buried ourselves,” she said thoughtfully. “My aunt’s marriage was over. She gave up her business, left the home where she’d lived for over twenty years, left all her friends. We lived in a new place, with made-up names and made-up histories. Always watching our backs, in constant fear that he might show up and make good on his threat. Maybe we covered our tracks so well the parole board couldn’t find us.”
I nodded. “It’s possible. Tell me something, Emily. When you met Vicki, last fall, did you know she was Sid Vernon’s daughter?”
Emily shook her head vigorously, her brown hair swinging from side to side. “I had no idea. Not until she mentioned that her father was a cop. Then I thought, well, it’s just one of those strange coincidences life tosses in your path. I mentioned it to my aunt. She had the same view. But when you came over to the house last week, I recognized you.”
“How? I don’t think we ever met.”
“My aunt pointed you out,” Emily said. “You and Mr. Seville. It was at the Marin County Courthouse, during the stalking trial. Please believe me, Jeri. I had no idea that my association with Vicki would put her, or any of the other people in this house, in any kind of danger.”
“I’m not so sure you did. I mink he may have met Vicki sometime last year when he was paroled to San Diego. If that’s the case, he made the connection between Vicki Vernon and Sid Vernon. Finding you might have been accidental.”
Emily was stubbornly prepared to shoulder all the blame. “Of course I put everyone in danger. Look at what happened. The phone calls, the plants, the bomb through the window. I know Sergeant Nguyen thinks it was Ted Macauley, but it must be...” She still couldn’t say his name, as though speaking the words might cause Richard Bradfield to appear right there on the deck.
“He’s come after me. I don’t know how he found me, but he was always clever. I should have known he’d track me down. But Jeri, I don’t want to have to run away for the rest of my life.”
“Neither do I. I’ll do what I can to help. I need to talk with your aunt. Where can I find her?”
“Mendocino. That’s where we went six years ago. She built a house on some land her second husband left her. And she owns an art gallery, just like before. I hadn’t told her anything about this, but ever since Wednesday night, when the bomb went off in the living room, I’ve been trying to reach her by phone.” Emily frowned.
“But she’s not there, or at her friend’s house in Fort Bragg. Thursday I was talking with Lee, the woman who works for her. Lee says my aunt is off on a buying trip. That’s when she drives all over the place, looking for new artists.”
“When’s she due back?” I asked.
“Yesterday. But I called this morning. She hasn’t returned. And Lee hasn’t heard from her.”
Emily looked at me, trouble and the beginnings of tears deepening the blue in her eyes. “I’m worried about my aunt, Jeri. Please go to Mendocino. Find her, warn her.”
Twenty-eight
SUNDAY, BEFORE LEAVING FOR MENDOCINO, I called Wayne Hobart at home. He hadn’t yet received the information Richard Bradfield’s parole officer was supposed to provide. I asked Wayne if he could find out whether Bradfield had worked while on parole, and if so, where.
Shortly before noon I ate a quick lunch and threw a change of clothes into my gray nylon overnight bag. After gassing up my Toyota, I headed for the freeway. The cassette tape I pushed into the maw of my dashboard player was the soundtrack to American Graffiti, my preferred road music. As the familiar voice of Bill Haley belted out the opening words to “Rock Around the Clock,” I headed north on U.S. 101, singing along with Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper for the next hundred miles, all the way to Cloverdale.
The little town, with less than six thousand population, lay just below the Sonoma-Mendocino county line, with Lake Sonoma to the west. Last time I was up here the U.S. 101 freeway ended at Cloverdale, but now the bypass had been constructed around town. I got off at the south end, where a sign read, WELCOME TO CLOVERDALE GATEWAY TO WARM SPRINGS DAM.
It wasn’t the dam I was looking for. I stopped at the appropriately named Corner Deli for something to drink and asked to look at a phone book. The police and fire departments were located farther north, at the corner of Broad Street and North Cloverdale Boulevard. I parked out front, went inside, and gave the woman at the front desk my business card, asking if she’d call the chief of police at home and tell him I was in town. Half an hour later his big voice boomed at me as he pushed open the outer door.
“Jeri Howard, I’ll be damned.”
Joe Kelso looked older, grayer, and he’d put on some weight, but he didn’t have the tired face and the worry lines I remembered from his days in Oakland Homicide, when he and Sid had worked together. He was more relaxed, his voice bantering.
I smiled at him. “I think retirement is agreeing with you, Joe.”
He laughed. “Retirement? Is that what this is? Hell, Jeri, I’m just as busy as I ever was. Did you know some lowlife broke into Cloverdale Propane the other night? That’s a crime wave around here.”
“Beats Oakland, I take it.”
“It does indeed.” His face turned more serious. “I have maybe one murder a year. And I clear it. We get our share of domestic violence and thievery, of course. A little drug traffic here and there, mostly evil weed, but no drive-by shootings. Yeah, it beats the hell out of Oakland.”
“How’s Brenda?” I asked as he poured us each a cup of coffee and ushered me into his office. He shut the door and gave me a rundown on Brenda, his wife, and their children and grandchildren. We chatted for about half that cup of coffee, then I cleared my throat. “Joe, have you talked with Sid or Wayne lately?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “No. Should I?” I didn’t answer right away. “Say, Jeri, I thought you were maybe heading up the coast for some rest and relaxation and just stopped to shoot the breeze. Is this business?”
“Sid’s got an internal affairs situation,” I told him.
“Sid Vernon?” Joe bellowed, slamming his fist against his desk. “No way. No way in hell. The man’s straight as an arrow.”
“It gets worse,” I said. I sat back in the chair and told him what I knew and what I’d guessed.
“Bradfield,” Joe said, the name leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “That son of a bitch. If only we’d been able to nail him for killing his wife. So Melissa Bradfield is Vicki Vernon’s roommate. And Cordelia Ramsey lives in Mendocino now.”
I nodded. “Melissa is now Emily Austen. Cordelia took the name Perdita Paxton. Paxton was her second husband’s name. And she owns an art gallery, like before. That’s the business she’s been in for most of her adult life. But if Bradfield makes that connection, and remembers the second husband came from Mendocino, that means he could track her down. Emily says her aunt was due home Friday, but she hasn’t
been able to get Perdita on the phone. That’s why I’m on my way up mere.”
Joe reached for the phone and a Rolodex full of cards. “The town of Mendocino’s unincorporated. They don’t have any police. For law enforcement they rely on the sheriff’s station at Fort Bragg. I know a deputy up in Ukiah, the county seat. He can tell me who handles that part of the coast. I’ll give Sid a holler too. You stay in touch, Jeri.”
I used the rest room at the police station, then went back out to my car. Highway 128 led northwest, gaining elevation as I went over a series of slow-going switchbacks and left Sonoma County for Mendocino County. Now I was in steep forests of oak trees, twisting and winding along the narrow two-lane asphalt with its double yellow line that indicated no passing. The road required concentration, and my slow speed frustrated the driver of a beat-up pickup, so I pulled over at one of the frequent turnouts to let him pass.
After he whizzed by me I saw a lumber truck barreling toward me from the opposite direction, hauling a load of huge redwood carcasses bleeding bark. As the truck went by, sucking wind, a bit of bark flew at my windshield, hitting the glass with a thump that left a red-brown mark. All along the road I saw distinctive bark, left here and there by the lumber trucks.
I caught up with the car ahead of me, then braked as I saw both its taillights and the familiar orange triangle that read ROAD WORK AHEAD. It was followed fifty yards or so by another that indicated we were entering a slide area. The spring rains had softened the soil under the pale green hillsides, sending a plume of dirt and gravel into the roadway. A CalTrans crew, all in orange coveralls and driving orange vehicles, was clearing away the debris. After a short wait the flagman waved us through.
The highway twisted and turned as it climbed, then descended and widened as I entered the Anderson Valley. Here they grew hops and sheep, and more recently apples and wine grapes. In the late nineteenth century the valley developed its own dialect, called Bootling, and some of it still survives, in and around the town of Boonville.
I slowed as I drove through Boonville, then picked up speed again and continued through vineyards toward Philo and Navarro. The road followed the North Fork of the Navarro River until it joined its southern counterpart and became simply the Navarro River, running wider and wider through a corridor of tall redwoods that created a tunnel of perpetual shadow, with the occasional shaft of sunlight dancing through the towering trees, dappling the road as it wound through the river canyon.
I pulled off the road at the campground, shut off the engine, and got out of my car to stretch my legs, listening to the quiet, marveling as I always did at the redwoods. They were mostly second growth, perhaps 125 years old. All the forests on this coast had been extensively logged in the last century, but some of the old-growth redwoods survived at Hendy Woods State Park, where a hundred acres of redwoods stretched over three hundred feet toward the sky.
A car went by on the highway. After it had gone I was alone in the dark woods, standing next to a cut-off stump wide enough to serve as the foundation for a small building, with only the rustling of leaves and ferns and the distant music of water over rocks as the Navarro River headed toward its destination. And I knew so must I. It was late afternoon and I wanted to get to Mendocino while it was still daylight.
I got back in my car and back onto the highway. The river widened with purpose, swollen with water from the spring rains, paralleling the highway. As I passed Hop Flat I saw the high water marks showing where the river had crested fifteen feet above this roadway in past floods. Now as the highway straightened out, the river was broad and tidal as it passed under the bridge looming on my left. Highway 128 ended here and the asphalt ribbon past that bridge became Highway 1, the Coast Highway.
The people who made the signs advising a twenty-mile speed limit weren’t kidding. The steep climb offered some breathtaking views of the river as it joined the Pacific Ocean, but that was for passengers. All my attention was dedicated to making it around those curves without driving off the bluff. Finally, I rounded a curve and looked north at the spectacular Mendocino coast. It was eight more miles to Mendocino, over a grassy marine terrace, then inland through a tight curve, then up and down again, dropping to sea level at Little River.
Finally I saw Mendocino, across the bay, with the tower of the Presbyterian church rising to meet the coastal fog as it rolled toward the mouth of the Big River this spring evening. The headlands jut west into the Pacific Ocean, high bluffs licked on three sides by the restless waves, with the forests to the east.
This wild beautiful coast first knew Pomo Indians and Russian fur traders. Then the Gold Rush came, bringing more people to California and more demand for buildings to house them. Mendocino was founded in 1852, its enterprise the logging of the surrounding redwood forest.
I’d seen old black and white photographs of loggers felling trees, with the resulting cut timber covering the flats of the Big River. These logs were hauled down to sea level by bull teams, loaded onto oceangoing vessels. But the last sawmill closed in 1938, and World War II lured residents from the coast. Isolated then as now by geography and the weather, Mendocino fell into neglect, its buildings boarded up and sagging. In the fifties and sixties the town slowly woke as artists moved in, their work filling the art center and the galleries. Now the summer and weekend visitors filled the bed and breakfast inns and ate at the town’s restaurants.
Many of the logging men who came to Mendocino had been New Englanders, and they’d recreated the architecture they’d known back home. Most of the homes were built in the 1870s and 1880s, though some dated back earlier, and they were of that style of architecture we called Victorian. The other architectural feature of Mendocino was its distinctive water towers, necessitated by the town’s low water table and perpetual water shortage. These structures dotted the village, broad and square at the base and gradually narrowing at the top.
Since it was Sunday, I took a chance that the Joshua Grindle Inn on Little Lake Road might have a vacancy. The inn had one room available that night. I checked in and presented my credit card. The water tower here contained rooms instead of water. Mine was at the top of the tower, a little aerie with a tiny bathroom, toilet, sink and shower stall, windows on all four walls that slanted inward, and a skylight in the roof.
I’d stayed at this inn twice before, while I was married to Sid, on a couple of rare weekends away from our busy schedules. We’d shared one of the suites in the house itself, coming down to the breakfast room in the mornings to chat with fellow travelers over breakfast, sipping sherry in the parlor after dinner at one of the restaurants in the village.
Not this trip. I’d have this double bed with its white chenille bedspread to myself. I was here on business, not for pleasure, though just being in Mendocino was a pleasure to me. I set my overnight bag on the blue carpet at the foot of the bed and went into the tiny bathroom to use the toilet and wash my face and hands. Then I looked out the west-facing window, where the sun was heading down toward the marine layer, twilight covering the headlands, bringing with it fog and a breeze that ruffled the trees at the back of the inn.
But I didn’t have time to linger and enjoy the view. I looked at my watch. Nearly five. I went outside and locked the door, then headed down the stairs that clung to the outside of the water tower.
Twenty-nine
PERDITA PAXTON HAD NAMED HER GALLERY Perdu, French for “lost.” I wondered if her choice of names, for herself and her business, meant what I thought it did.
I angled the Toyota into a parking space midway on the block of Main Street between Lansing and Kasten. Perdu was near the Mendocino Hotel, located on a path that led from Mendocino’s Main Street to Albion Street, not far from the entrance to the Kelley house, once a residence and now the village historical museum. Main Street had buildings on the north side only, unless one counted the old Ford house, now the interpretive center and museum for the Mendocino Headlands State Park.
I looked across the street and the gra
ssy meadow crisscrossed with paths, toward Mendocino Bay. In the fading light I saw white foamed waves crashing on the bluffs to the south and the headlights of a car as it rounded the curve I had so recently traveled, heading onto the Big River bridge. A man and a woman passed me, holding hands, talking softly. I watched them walk toward the Mendocino Hotel, where they stopped to examine the menu posted outside the hotel restaurant.
I walked back between two shops to a small courtyard between the streets. Several businesses fronted on this plaza, with its flagstones and flowers. The gallery was on my left, up several shallow redwood steps and through double doors to a long narrow room built on three levels. I stepped inside, onto the middle level. Paintings and prints hung on the walls on either side of me. To my left, on the lower level, I saw a large abstract sculpture of a woman, constructed of terra-cotta. Grouped around this were low tables displaying pottery and ceramics, not crowded together, but several pieces distanced from the others, so that each had its own space. The same sort of motif was used on the upper level to my right, only the large piece was made of metal and looked like a bird. The smaller objects around it were polished wood, made of cherry, oak, and walnut.
Opposite the door I’d come through a long lighted case displayed jewelry that was more art than something to wear. The glittering metal and stones had prices to match. I saw no one in the gallery, but when I crossed the threshold, a low chime had sounded. Now the door behind the case opened and I faced a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, with short dark hair and dark eyes, wearing a long black dress and high-laced boots. She looked at me and glanced discreetly at her watch.
“We’re just closing,” she said.
She had me there. It was now past five. But she hadn’t locked the door yet.
