A Credible Threat (The Jeri Howard Series Book 6)

by Janet Dawson

  He looked momentarily anguished, then his face reddened. I wondered if he viewed Marisol as something more than just one of the housemates.

  “I like living here. I don’t want to cross anyone.” He sighed deeply. “When Vicki and Emily said something about this guy Macauley bothering them, how was I to know it was the same guy?” He raised shoulders and arms in an exaggerated shrug of supplication. “There’s more than one Macauley in the phone book. Cal’s a big school, large student body, y’know.”

  “Enough with the excuses, Nelson.” I folded my arms across the front of my cotton sweater and looked implacable. “Surely when they said the guy who was hassling them was Ted Macauley, you knew who they were talking about.”

  “Well, yeah. Sorta. I kinda connected the dots. Not right away, though. I mean, the guy they were talking about sounded like such a rank pig.” Nelson grimaced. “I don’t remember Ted being like that in high school. Of course, he was always the good-looking jock with more girlfriends than you could count. Unlike me.” He shook his head.

  “What do you remember about Ted in high school?”

  “He was real competitive in sports,” Nelson said, playing with a strand of hair. “Competitive in academics too, come to think of it. I mean, the guy’s smart. He was right up there in the class standings. Always had good luck with the ladies, as I recall. That’s why I just can’t picture him making all those phone calls. Or doing the plants. I just can’t see Macauley chopping up a lemon tree because a couple of girls—pardon me, women—wouldn’t go out with him.”

  Personally, I liked Macauley in the role of harasser. The guy had a nasty edge that wasn’t far under his handsome surface. When I’d been over at his apartment, his hostility toward Vicki and Emily had boiled over, splashing me as well. I didn’t buy his excuse—and that’s what it was—that the ugly words he’d hurled at them over the past few months could be dismissed as a joke.

  There had to be more to it than I thought. Some ulterior motive on Macauley’s part. But if there was, I hadn’t figured it out yet.

  Nelson shook his head again. “I know he called here a couple of times. But how would he know where we live?”

  “He knew,” I said, thinking about what Dave had told me.

  It was possible Nelson was lying about how well he knew Macauley or about his motivation for not telling his housemates. He said he didn’t want to be accused of having anything to do with Macauley’s harassment of Vicki and Emily, so he’d kept silent, figuring that saying nothing would keep him off the griddle. Did I buy his explanation? I wasn’t sure.

  “Anything else you remember about Ted’s high school days? Anything more unusual than competitive and ladykiller?”

  “Well...” Nelson shrugged. “He’s a chem major, you know. Has a real talent for it. He used to build fireworks for the Fourth of July. Mixed the stuff right up at home. Bet that made his folks nervous.” He stopped, then grinned, waggling his eyebrows. “Right at the start of his senior year, he got called on the carpet for building a bomb in the chem lab. He got suspended for a couple of days.”

  Maybe that’s why Macauley had a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook next to his yearbook. I moved toward the door. “Thanks, Nelson. If you think of anything else...”

  Nelson jerked his pointy chin in the direction of the main house. “You’re gonna tell them, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.” I reached for the doorknob. “I have to. It puts a different light on the whole situation.”

  I left Nelson still huddled on the sofa and crossed the yard on a flagstone path that had been obscured by overgrown grass. I mounted the plank stairs to the deck and opened the back door. I felt as though I’d stepped back in time, to my first visit, watching the residents of the house sidestep each other as though their dinner preparations were an elaborately choreographed ballet. Sasha stood at the stove, stirring something in the cast-iron skillet. Emily had made yet another pot of Peet’s coffee, and she poured two mugs, handing one to Vicki, who stayed out of the way at one end of the table as she leafed through the pages of a book. In front of her I saw a plate filled with a variety of raw vegetables. Vicki reached for a carrot stick and stuck it into her mouth. Rachel and Marisol both stood in front of the wide-open refrigerator door.

  “Keep your dead animals away from my tofu.” Rachel’s voice was tart as she loomed over her shorter housemate.

  “These are the best damn carnitas in East Oakland,” Marisol retorted, a protective hand over a foil-covered pan. “Made especially for me by my friend Lupe. I won’t have you referring to them as dead animals.”

  “Shut the refrigerator door,” Sasha told them both, sounding exasperated as she waved her wooden spoon. “You’re letting all the cold air out.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Rachel laughed as she shut the door.

  I smiled. The scene reminded me of dinnertime in the kitchen of the house where I grew up, a Victorian over in Alameda, where my brother and I bickered constantly, and my mother the gourmet cook told us both to cut it out. In fact, I’m sure she’d told us not to let the cold air out of the refrigerator more times than I could count.

  “Want some coffee?” Emily asked me. She’d just pulled out the chair next to Vicki but hovered rather than taking a seat, ready to play hostess.

  “Yes, thanks. I’ll get it myself. Mugs?”

  Marisol pointed to a cupboard above her dark head. I opened it and took out a mug, filling it with rich black coffee. Then I took the seat Nelson had occupied a week ago, the one at the end of the table, near the back door. I didn’t see Martin, but I heard him. The little boy was in his back porch bedroom, talking to himself and singing.

  A pleasant dinnertime scene, I thought, sipping my coffee. They were a family. But like a lot of families, this one had secrets.

  “Why did you want to talk with Nelson?” Vicki asked after she’d crunched her way through the carrot stick. She surveyed the plate of veggies as though trying to decide which one to consume next, and finally settled on a strip of sweet red bell pepper.

  I took another sip of coffee and watched the assembled housemates over the rim of the mug. “Nelson knows Ted Macauley. They went to the same high school.”

  “You’re kidding.” Surprise was written on Vicki’s face.

  Marisol scowled indignantly. “And he didn’t tell us? What a lousy thing to do.”

  Rachel looked thoughtful, playing with the end of her braid, but she didn’t say anything. Neither did Emily, sitting self-contained and solitary with her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.

  Sasha switched off the burner on the gas stove and set the skillet on a trivet. She turned so that she stood with her back to the counter, leaning on the cabinets. “Why didn’t he tell us?”

  “He claims that at first he wasn’t sure it was the same Macauley he knew in school. And that he had difficulty believing that Macauley would harass Vicki and Emily.”

  “Why would Nelson think we’d lie about such a thing?” Vicki asked. “The guy is harassing us. It’s scary.”

  “It’s not that he thinks you’re lying,” I said. “It’s that Nelson has trouble connecting Macauley’s behavior as you describe it with the Macauley he knew in high school.”

  “In other words, it’s a guy kind of thing.” Marisol’s sarcastic snarl told me exactly what she thought of Nelson’s excuse.

  Rachel waved aside Marisol’s anger and focused on something else. “You think this Macauley could have gotten our new unlisted number from Nelson?”

  “It’s so easy to get phone numbers, though.” Vicki gazed at the vegetable plate, then pushed it away. “Every time I write a check, it seems like the salesclerk asks for my phone number. And my address is printed on the check. People can read over your shoulder or overhear things. Nelson may have inadvertently let that information slip.”

  “He says he didn’t know Macauley that well,” I said. “Nelson was two classes behind. And according to him, he’s barely talked with Macauley since they graduat
ed.”

  “You believe him?” Sasha folded her arms across her chest.

  I sipped my coffee. “It sounds as though they were acquaintances rather than friends. At least on Nelson’s side. Macauley may have been aware of Nelson’s living arrangements without Nelson reciprocating. We’ll have to wait and see what happens next. I leaned on Macauley pretty heavily yesterday.”

  So had Sid. And Macauley had leaned back, riling that complaint against Sid. I looked over at Vicki, wondering if she’d talked with her father today.

  Sasha opened her mouth to speak, then stopped, with a quick shake of her head that put a temporary lid on the discussion. Martin had entered the kitchen from his bedroom, making a beeline for his mother with only a cursory glance at the rest of us assembled grown-ups.

  “Are you hungry, baby?” Sasha ran a hand over his dark curls. He nodded. “I’ll have your dinner on the table in just a minute. Go wash your hands.”

  “Looking for my book,” he said. “I can’t find it.”

  “Which one?” Emily asked, leaning forward.

  “Green Eggs and Ham.”

  Rachel laughed. “Oh, that’s my favorite.”

  “I always liked The Cat in the Hat myself,” I said.

  “Did you look in my room and our living room?” Sasha asked him. He nodded solemnly.

  “I think I saw some of your books in our living room,” Vicki said, waving in the direction of the front room all the housemates shared. “On that table over by the window.”

  “Go look there,” Sasha said, propelling him toward the door with an affectionate pat on his rear end. “Then wash up. We’ll read after dinner.” When he’d gone, she looked at us, grouped around the table. “We can continue this conversation later. I don’t want Martin to know what’s going on.”

  “Agreed.” I got up and crossed the kitchen to top off my coffee.

  I heard a crash mingling with Martin’s frightened cry. The shatter of broken glass on hardwood floors told me something heavy had come through the window. I raced through the open doorway that led from the kitchen to the living room.

  Something heavy, all right. Like a pipe. Only this one had a fuse protruding from one end.

  The fuse was burning.

  Nineteen

  “STAY BACK,” I YELLED, KNOWING SASHA AND the others were behind me. I flew across the room to Martin, who was backing away from the device, hugging his book to his chest. I grabbed him by the arm and ran, half-carrying him, for the kitchen. “Down on the floor, down on the floor!”

  Sasha seized Martin from me as I crossed the threshold into the kitchen. I waved them toward the other end of the room, where a door led to Martin’s room. We surged through into the little boy’s domain and bellyflopped onto the carpet.

  “Cover your ears,” I shouted.

  Then the bomb went off, a deafening explosion that rattled the windows and made my ears ring, despite the hands I’d cupped over them. We stayed huddled in our collective heap for a moment longer, then Martin began to sob.

  Sasha raised herself to a sitting position and gathered her son tightly to her bosom, his face pressed into the hollow of her throat. She rocked back and forth, her voice unraveling in a litany, part soothing and part hysterical, murmuring a steady stream of reassurances into the boy’s ear. She sounded as though she were trying to convince herself.

  We scrambled to our feet. I moved to the kitchen, followed by Vicki, Rachel, and Marisol. “Fire extinguisher?” I asked.

  “Under the sink,” Vicki said. “There’s another one in the earthquake stash in the hall closet.”

  “On my way.” Rachel headed for the closet. Marisol followed, detouring into Sasha’s bathroom. She returned to Martin’s room, carrying a blue plastic case with a red cross on the cover. She opened it and knelt near Sasha, who still cradled her son.

  Vicki pulled the phone off the cradle and dialed 911 as I opened the cabinet and pulled out the extinguisher. Then Nelson came up the back steps at a dead run. He barreled through the door into the kitchen and stopped, staring at us. “What was that?”

  “A bomb.” Our recent conversation about Macauley was fresh in my mind.

  Nelson swallowed convulsively, his face paling below his untidy brown hair. He ran both hands through his hair. “Everybody okay?” he asked.

  “No, everybody’s not okay,” Marisol snapped, sounding rattled. “We’re all scared shitless. Look at Martin. He’s hysterical.”

  Nelson winced as though he’d been slapped. He looked around. His eyes found Emily, pressed against the kitchen wall, so pale I thought she might faint. There was panic in her usually calm blue eyes. She seemed paralyzed by fright, like some animal in the middle of a highway, oncoming headlights blinding its gaze. Nelson moved to her side and put his arms around her. She hugged him fiercely, glad of the comfort.

  I moved toward the open doorway, my nostrils filled with the stink of the bomb’s aftermath. But there was no fire, just a lot of smoke and debris. The persimmon sofa was scorched, its upholstery shredded. The pipe had turned into shrapnel, bits and pieces burying themselves into the wall and what was left of the furniture. I shook my head slowly, thanking providence and old-fashioned construction techniques. If any of those fragments had hit flesh, we’d have been seriously injured. Or dead. But this old Berkeley brown shingle had confined the explosion to the living room. The wall between it and the kitchen probably had three or four inches of dead air sandwiched between two layers of thick plaster on top of two layers of lathe.

  “We were lucky,” Rachel said in a subdued voice, standing in the doorway that led to the hall, holding the other fire extinguisher.

  I heard sirens in the distance, getting closer. Someone was pounding on the front door. Rachel set down the extinguisher and pulled it open, admitting one of the neighbors, who wanted to know what the hell happened and whether everyone was all right.

  I moved to the gaping hole that used to be the front window, my feet crunching on the glass. Out in the street a crowd of people with stunned faces was already gathering. Dinnertime in this pleasant middle-class Berkeley neighborhood had been interrupted by the deafening roar of the bomb. Then the people disappeared from my line of vision as a Berkeley police cruiser and a fire truck arrived, lights flashing and sirens wailing like banshees. The wail stopped, leaving a pool of unnatural quiet, punctuated only by my thoughts.

  This moved the hostilities several rungs up the ladder from obscene phone calls. Was Ted Macauley still amusing himself by building bombs?

  “It was galvanized pipe,” I told Sergeant Nguyen.

  Nguyen was Berkeley’s bomb guy. At least that’s how he’d introduced himself. He had spent the first couple of hours processing the scene, along with several technicians who were methodically sifting through what was left of the living room, bagging evidence and taking photographs. Now Nguyen was interviewing witnesses, starting with me.

  I took a sip of coffee and continued describing what I’d seen lying on the Turkish rug in the living room that split second before I grabbed Martin. “About four inches long, maybe half an inch in diameter. Green fuse, maybe two feet long. Black powder, from the smell.”

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t bigger,” Nguyen said, scribbling notes in a small spiral pad. “As it is, someone could have been killed.”

  I nodded. “But I think it was meant to scare us rather than kill someone.” At least that was my take on it.

  Nguyen tilted his head slightly to one side and raised his eyebrows. “Scare you? Suppose you tell me why an Oakland private investigator just happens to be on the scene when a pipe bomb gets lobbed through a window in Berkeley.”

  Nguyen and I were alone in the kitchen. I’d made the coffee this time, instead of Emily. The other housemates were gathered in Martin’s room, with the exception of Martin and Sasha, who’d taken her frightened son to her room.

  I needed the caffeine. Maybe it would dissolve my weariness. The adrenaline rush that had propelled me into the l
iving room was gone, swept away like a wave leaving the beach, and all that was left was exhaustion.

  I stared at the coffee in the mug before me. Then I looked back up at Sergeant Nguyen, who looked back, patiently waiting for me to answer.

  “I’m a friend of Ms. Vernon’s,” I said. “Actually, I used to be married to her father, so I guess you could call me her stepmother. Vicki called me last Friday because of some things that have been happening. This has all the earmarks of a stalker case.”

  I gave Nguyen a quick rundown of the past two months, punctuated by the nuisance phone calls, the instances of Vicki and Emily being followed, and finally the past week’s vandalism. “Inspector Culver in Property Crimes took the vandalism report. He also had the phone company put a tap on the line. But it looks like the caller is using pay phones in Berkeley and Oakland.”

  “You think this bomb is related?” Nguyen tapped his notebook with his pen.

  “It very well could be. I’ve been making some inquiries, looking for reasons the people who live here might be targets.”

  “Got any suspects?”

  I told him what I’d learned so far, outlining Sasha’s work on the affirmative action front, Rachel’s escort duty at the abortion clinic, and the anti-abortion protester who seemed to have made her his target for invective. For good measure I threw in Marisol’s old boyfriend Peter Dace, the guy who actually had a track record of stalking.

  “Then there’s Ted Macauley,” I said, saving my prime suspect till last. “He’s been harassing both Vicki and another of the housemates, Emily Austen. Neither of them would go out with him, despite his persistent phone calls, so he took affront. Decided they must be lesbians. He of course has a different take on the situation. Says the women are overreacting. But I certainly don’t think so.” I told Nguyen about the first time Macauley had followed Vicki and Emily, on Telegraph Avenue, and about the most recent incident, last Saturday when he’d accosted Vicki in the library on campus.