A Credible Threat

by Janet Dawson

  “No, I’m sure you didn’t. Where are Vicki and Emily?”

  “They went on ahead with Molly,” Perdita said. “Around the bluff, I think. We’re supposed to meet at the main entrance. Jeri, is something wrong?”

  “That gives us time to talk, then.” I gave Tom Jeffries a hard-eyed stare. “Tell me, Mr. Jeffries, about your relationship with Richard Bradfield.”

  Forty-three

  PERDITA PAXTON WENT WHITE AROUND THE mouth and stepped away from Tom Jeffries. Her gray eyes chilled as they raked his face, as though she’d never seen him before.

  “I didn’t know you knew Richard Bradfield,” she spat out.

  Jeffries stared at her, confused. “I didn’t know Bradfield,” he protested. His eyes moved from Perdita to me as he shook his head. “Not well, anyway. And I certainly didn’t have a relationship with him. Business or otherwise.”

  “He worked for you, in a manner of speaking,” I said. “So did Sam Kacherian.”

  “That’s nonsense. Bradfield had his own company. As for Sam...” Jeffries stumbled a bit as he said the next words. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Belston Enterprises, Mr. Jeffries. You were a senior vice president of Belston, until you retired last year. Belston owns a chain of packing stores, all over Southern California.”

  “Belston owns a lot of businesses.” He was hedging. He knew where I was headed.

  “Sam Kacherian worked in several of those stores, after he was paroled.”

  Jeffries sighed heavily and looked at Perdita’s stormy face, hoping for some comfort. He didn’t get any there. “Look, Ms. Howard, I knew Sam Kacherian a long time. He’d just spent five years in prison. I know, I know, he committed a crime. But he paid for it. I was just trying to help the man get back on his feet.”

  “So you talked with Belston’s former general counsel, the one that got appointed to the parole board a few years ago.” Now he looked startled. “Oh, yes, I checked that too. It’s amazing what you can find out with computers these days. Your pal made sure Kacherian was paroled to Orange County, close enough to the San Fernando Valley so he could at least see his children regularly, even if his ex-wife didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He had a job waiting for him, in Santa Ana, courtesy of Belston’s Human Resources director. But he couldn’t make it to work on time, so the manager let him go. You found him another job, in Tustin. But he got laid off after the holidays.”

  “He was having a hard time adjusting,” Jeffries said.

  “You know Kacherian is dead.”

  Now Jeffries looked pained. “Of course I do. I attended his funeral. But what the hell does all this have to do with Bradfield?”

  “Bradfield was paroled about the same time Kacherian was. To San Diego. Where he worked for a janitorial firm called San Diego County Cleaners.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Jeffries demanded.

  “Considering that Belston also owns that firm, yes, it’s supposed to mean something. Did you help Bradfield get a job too?”

  “Of course not.” I watched his face as he denied it, trying to decide if he was telling the truth.

  “Then how do you explain it?”

  “I can’t explain it. Unless my friend in Human Resources somehow thought that I meant...” He shook his head. “No, no, it must be a coincidence. Just where is this leading, Ms. Howard? Sam may have been involved in that stock thing, but he had nothing to do with whatever else Bradfield did.”

  He turned to Perdita. Her eyes were as cold and gray as the sky on the other side of the plate-glass window. “What’s going on, Perdita? Why are you looking at me that way? How in the hell does this involve you?”

  “You have no idea who I am?” Her voice was icy. “I’m supposed to believe this is all coincidence.”

  He moved toward her but she moved away, toward the other end of the window. He stopped and put his hands out in supplication. “Of course I know who you are. You’re Perdita Paxton. What the hell is going on here?”

  “I’m Cordelia Ramsey,” she told him, her voice cold as she faced him. “Bradfield killed my sister. Then he tried to kill me.”

  Jeffries stared at her, stunned.

  “Did you lead him up here, Tom?” she asked. “So he could try again?”

  “No,” said a voice behind me, one that made no attempt to suppress its gloating tone. “I got that information from Colin Derrill.”

  I turned, slowly. Richard Bradfield stood in the doorway of Cliff House, looking quite pleased with himself.

  In khaki pants, a work shirt, and a blue jacket, he was dressed far more casually than the old Richard Bradfield, the one who’d favored expensive blue pinstriped suits. His face looked much like the picture faxed to me earlier in the week. A little older, a little grayer, but the extra flesh at the jawline didn’t disguise the arrogant tilt to his chin. What the picture hadn’t shown were those eyes, which still held their blue fury. Right now the eyes held something else, a glint of triumph. In his right hand he held a revolver.

  “Colin?” Perdita said, the word hissing from her as she looked at Bradfield with loathing. Somehow she didn’t seem surprised that he’d finally tracked her down. She’d been expecting it. “Colin would never—”

  “Colin was attacked earlier this week.” I moved my head slightly to the right, where Perdita stood, a few feet back. “He’s in the hospital. Bradfield beat it out of him.”

  “Fucking faggot.” Bradfield smiled contemptuously as he moved farther into the shelter. “I hit him a couple of times, with this gun, and he folded right up. Didn’t even have to shoot him to get him to talk. You always did have lousy taste in men, Cordelia.”

  “It was my sister who had lousy taste in men,” she snapped. “Starting with you.”

  Her words slid off him like water on a duck. He surveyed Jeffries, on my left, who still looked stunned at this twist in events. “So this is the latest one. Good to see you again, Tom. You were a big help.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jeffries shot back. “I only met you once, that day in Pebble Beach. I never helped you with anything.”

  “Oh, but you did. More than once, whether you knew it or not. At Pebble Beach... Well, we won’t talk about Pebble Beach. Let’s talk about what you’ve done for me lately.”

  Bradfield jiggled the barrel of the gun, as though he couldn’t keep still. “When I got to Sam’s apartment last January,” he continued, “I discovered he kept in touch with his good friend Tom Jeffries. I read a few of your letters to Sam. You write a good description, Tom. That woman you met in Mendocino, the one you were so crazy about, she sounded a lot like Cordelia, even if the name was different. Of course I knew old Mike Paxton came from this neck of the woods. Sorry I didn’t get up here sooner. But I had a few other things to take care of before I came calling.”

  “Such as killing Kacherian,” I said. I took a step closer to Perdita, closer to the door. “Stealing his car, and all those others, so you could head up north to Berkeley and terrorize Vicki Vernon and her housemates.”

  “Stand still, where I can see you.” I stopped. Bradfield turned the corners of his mouth upward, in what was an unpleasant grimace rather than a smile.

  “Very perceptive, Ms. Jeri Howard. I thought you were too smart for your own good. Back then, when you and Seville pulled the rug out from under me. And now. I spent all that time in prison planning how I was going to get back at all of you. Such a run of luck I’ve had.”

  He smiled again, jiggling the gun. “I recognized Vicki last summer, working in that dental office, when I was swabbing out shitters as a janitor. She looks just like her old man, the hotshot Detective Vernon. He thought he was so damned smart. Him and that old war horse Kelso. But they couldn’t pin anything on me. So... Little Miss Vicki Vernon. What better way to get even with Detective Vernon. I heard her give her new address in Berkeley to the receptionist. Imagine my surprise—”

  “When you got to Berkel
ey,” I said, “and discovered that your daughter lived in the same house.”

  “My own dear Melissa. Fruit of my loins, who damned me to hell, and said she never wanted to see me again. See, another stroke of luck. So was Ted Macauley. I saw him that day he followed Vicki and Melissa on Telegraph Avenue. He looked useful. So I struck up a conversation with him later, at one of the coffeehouses. He was easy to manipulate. What a self-involved little prick he was.”

  Just like the one before me now, I thought. I noticed he spoke of Macauley in the past tense. That didn’t bode well for Ted.

  “Macauley helped you harass Vicki and her friends. Who made the calls? Which of you threw the bomb?”

  “Both of us made the calls. I delivered the bomb. Ted lost his nerve in the crunch.”

  “Did he help you get the gun?”

  “This?” Bradfield’s eyes flicked down at the weapon, then back at me. “You could say that. Ted liked to play with guns as well as bombs. I found this under the seat of his car. Yes, meeting up with Ted was a real stroke of luck.”

  “I would imagine, since he did some of your dirty work for you,” I said conversationally. “Maybe he can even play fall guy, after this is all over. Where is Ted, by the way?”

  “Somewhere he won’t be found till I’m ready for him to be found.”

  Which meant Ted was probably dead, killed by this madman sometime after the bomb went through the window of the house on Garber Street. Maybe even before.

  In the distance I heard a dog bark and remembered Vicki and Emily, out walking somewhere on the headland, with the Airedale terrier. Perdita had told me earlier that the younger women had gone on ahead, that they were all supposed to rendezvous at the main entrance to the gardens, which closed at five.

  I stole a glance at my watch. Four-thirty. If Perdita and Jeffries didn’t show up, would Vicki and Emily come looking for them? Had Sergeant Sullivan ever gotten my message? That looked doubtful. I’d have to do something, and soon.

  It started to rain again, drops beating a tattoo against the plate glass of the overlook. The unlighted shelter darkened and the faces of the three people with me stood out white in the gloom. I gauged the distance between me and the others, looking around for something I could use as a means of defense. There was the railing in front of the window, if I could wrench it free. There was also that big rock over in the corner, where Perdita stood.

  “I saw Andi Haskell the other day,” I said conversationally. “She told me you killed your wife. And that she’d testify to that in court.”

  That was stretching the truth concerning my meeting with Andi. But Bradfield didn’t know that. My words wiped the smile off his face. He took a step toward me.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  So he didn’t know. Or he hadn’t yet made the attempt to find her. Or maybe he figured she’d never talk.

  “You think I’m going to tell you? So you can go after her too? Forget it, Bradfield.”

  He took another step toward me. I heard the dog bark again. This time it was closer, and there were voices in the distance. Perdita heard it too. I felt her alarm.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything about Andi,” I told Bradfield, goading him at the same time I was hoping he didn’t shoot me. But if he shot me, I couldn’t tell him where Andi Haskell was.

  He moved toward me and I circled to the right, closer to the door. Behind him I saw Tom Jeffries take a step toward Perdita. Bradfield caught the movement from the corner of his eye. He shifted position, so that he could see all three of us, and leveled the gun at Jeffries.

  “You I don’t need,” he told the older man. “Shall I kill him, Perdita, right here in front of you?”

  She swore at him, raising her voice in desperate anger. They could have heard her all the way to Mendocino. As it was, I’m sure she was hoping whoever was outside Cliff House could hear her.

  I heard a low growl, then the Airedale came boiling through the doorway, launching herself at Bradfield’s legs. He pointed the gun at the dog and squeezed the trigger.

  The report echoed loudly around the room and a crack appeared in the window. Bradfield’s shot had gone wild, probably because Tom Jeffries had leaped at him the same time Molly had. The room erupted in a chaos of noise as shouts came at me from all sides. Perdita had her hands on Bradfield, trying to wrench the gun away from him.

  The gun went off again and she screamed. I wasn’t sure if she’d been hit, but her scream was echoed by one of the young women outside. Emily appeared in the doorway. She tried to run into the room, but Vicki grabbed her arm and held her back.

  “Let her in,” Bradfield shouted, exultant. “I want her too.”

  He kicked at the dog, which was trying to savage his leg. She yelped, then lunged for him again, undeterred. I scooped up the big rock in the corner. Then I hurled it at Bradfield.

  It hit him on the side of the head. He dropped the gun and reeled backward, over the railing and into the plate glass. The crack in the glass widened, then splintered and shattered as if in slow motion. Bradfield’s momentum carried him through the glass and down, to the rocks and the pounding surf.

  Forty-four

  I DON’T KNOW WHETHER THE ROCK I THREW killed Bradfield, or if it was the rocks below. I probably never will.

  By the time the Mendocino County search and rescue team recovered the body, it was in bad shape, smashed repeatedly against the rocky shore during the night as the storm front moved across the coast. I talked it over with Kaz later, when he got back from Paris. He said Bradfield was probably stunned when he went through the window, and died when he landed on the rocks.

  Either way, I contributed to the man’s death. Bradfield was a sociopath. No doubt he would have killed us all. I kept replaying the scene, like a videotape on automatic rewind, the shock and the sick feeling in my stomach returning every time I relived the rest of that evening, seeing the flashing red lights through the rain, there at the botanical gardens, and the white, brightly lighted hallways at the hospital in Fort Bragg.

  Sergeant Sullivan had gotten my message, and he’d arrived at the gardens in time to hear the shots. Perdita had a flesh wound in her arm. It was healing. She and Molly were at home in Mendocino. I didn’t know if she’d resume her relationship with Tom Jeffries. He’d collapsed there at Cliff House. The doctors said he’d had a mild heart attack. That was why he’d retired early from Belston Enterprises, as it turned out. I decided he was telling the truth about not having helped Bradfield get a job. Whether Perdita would give him the benefit of the doubt had yet to be determined. The jury was still out on that one.

  Emily was treated for shock, but she came out of it all right. After a few days on the coast, she was back in class at Berkeley, utilizing the university’s resources to get some counseling, according to Vicki, to exorcise the demons left over from her mother’s murder at the hands of her father.

  “She never did talk it out with anyone before,” Vicki said as we sipped lemonade on the deck of the Garber Street house. It was another Saturday morning, a month later. The March that had come in like a rainy, roaring lion left like a lamb, making way for sunny, balmy April. Vicki wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, and she was stretched out on the bench on one side of the picnic table as she brought me up to date on Emily. “Finding her mother murdered like that, and having to live with her father afterward.”

  “Then there was the custody fight, and Bradfield stalked her aunt, threatening to kill her.” I shook my head. “At least Colin Derrill’s going to be all right. Wayne Hobart said Derrill came out of the coma a few days after it all went down. It was Bradfield who’d attacked him.”

  “He’s luckier than Ted Macauley,” Vicki said. “Not that I liked the guy, but... to die like that.”

  “I know.” They’d found Macauley’s body the following day, on Sunday, buried in a shallow grave in a lot up on Grizzly Peak Boulevard. He’d been shot with his own gun, the one the sheriff’s people had recovered at the same
time they brought Bradfield’s body up the bluff. Hard to say when Bradfield killed him, whether it was before or after the bomb came through the window.

  The harassment complaint against Sid had gone through the Professional Standards Section, with recommendations going up and down the chain, resulting in an official no-cause outcome and an unofficial serious talking-to from Sid’s lieutenant. Sid was back at his desk at the Oakland Police Department, he and Wayne working like a well-oiled team. Vicki said Sid was still dating Graciela Portillo. From the way Vicki wrinkled her nose, I could see that this wasn’t to her taste.

  “As potential stepmother material,” Vicki said, “I like her a lot less than I like you. Not that Dad has said anything to indicate that he’s thinking of getting married again. But I won’t mess with his love life if he won’t mess with mine.”

  “Oh? Do you have a love life?”

  She grinned. “I’ve been going out with Nelson.”

  “Nelson? That’s like dating your brother.”

  “I won’t mess with your love life,” she intoned, “if you won’t mess with mine.”

  “Fine, fine.” I chuckled. And I did have a love life again, now that Kaz was back. In fact, I was seeing him this evening.

  The door of the garage apartment opened and Ben came out, barefoot and in blue jeans and a T-shirt, heading for the back steps and the kitchen. “Morning,” he said.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s afternoon, actually.”

  “When you work nights, morning is whenever you start. Is there any coffee?”

  “Emily made a pot before she went shopping,” Vicki said, pouring herself another glass of lemonade from the pitcher she’d placed in the center of the table. “There should be some.”

  Ben opened the back door. He returned a few minutes later with a cup of coffee and a spoon in one hand, a heaping bowl of cereal in the other. He joined us at the picnic table. “I got the last cup. I made another pot.”

  “How are the studies going?” I asked him.