A Credible Threat (The Jeri Howard Series Book 6)

by Janet Dawson

  The hills that rolled down off the ridge toward town looked dry and brown, while the mountains that rose at Boulder’s western perimeter were blue-gray, touched here and there with white, as a reluctant winter gave way to an early spring. I contrasted this with the green rainy landscape resulting from a Northern California spring. Where I came from, dry and brown was the norm in summer. So was living at sea level, with higher humidity. I recalled that the last time I’d been in Colorado, both the dryness and the altitude had bothered me.

  I found the county courthouse, its red-gold marble facade echoing the red-gold sandstone of the university buildings. It was downtown on the Pearl Street Mall, and I located the building with more ease than I did a parking place. Once inside I found my way to the recorder’s office, where I asked the clerk to search the name Haskell in the county’s computerized records. Anything recorded by a court should have been there. I was having a lucky streak today. Tina Kellner had told me Andi Haskell’s father died while Andi was in college, about fifteen years earlier. There was a death certificate on file for one John A. Haskell, Longmont, Colorado. After the death certificate had been recorded, it was mailed back to a lawyer’s office in Longmont.

  “Probably a joint tenancy,” the clerk told me. “If both spouses had owned the property as joint tenants, the surviving spouse would have had to file the death certificate in order to sell.”

  Further digging into the county records provided more information on mat particular real estate transaction. The assessor’s office told me who was paying taxes on the old Haskell farm. It looked like the present owner was a firm called Front Range Development, but that wasn’t who’d purchased the farm from Estelle M. Haskell fifteen years ago. I went to the voters division and consulted registration records, which gave me the current address of the person I was looking for.

  Finally, I tucked my notebook into my purse and walked back out to my rental car. I pointed it northeast on Highway 119, the straight diagonal route to Longmont.

  Thirty-six

  “JOHN WAS SOME YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME,” Dean Lester said. “Healthy as a horse, I thought. Then one day he just dropped dead of a heart attack, right in the middle of harvest. To up and die sudden like that...”

  Lester shook his head. He was a round-faced balding man, probably in his mid-sixties. His round torso matched his face, which was lined from years spent in the sun. We were seated in the cluttered living room of a small one-story brick house on the west side of Longmont. It was a good-sized town, with a view of the foothills and the Rockies looming to the west. Lester lived in a neighborhood of well-tended older homes lining the tree-shaded streets, on Bross Street near the corner of Longs Peak Avenue. I’d called him from a phone booth at a strip mall on the south side of town. When I explained who I was and why I was in town, he invited me over.

  In fact, he seemed eager for the company. He was a widower, he said, on his own for three years now. His sole companion was a middle-sized floppy-eared dog, his fur a mix of black, tan, and white, looking like he had some shepherd and hound in his ancestry. This man-and-dog bachelorhood might have accounted for the lived-in condition of the house. Lester made a good pot of coffee, though, and we were using it to wash down some pastries I’d picked up at a bakery next to the phone booth.

  Once the social niceties were out of the way and the dog had left off sniffing my feet and stretched out on the carpet near the coffee table, Lester told me about Andi Haskell’s father. “He had a half-section, just like me,” Lester said, explaining that a half-section was 320 acres. “We grew corn, soybeans, some sugar beets.”

  “When did you purchase the farm?”

  “Several months after John died, around Thanksgiving. Estelle wasn’t interested in farming it herself or hiring anyone to do it. And I figured she needed the money, what with Andrea in college. She took my offer and moved in with her sister.” He took a sip of coffee, then continued his narrative. “I sold both places after my wife died. My kids were after me to retire, none of them wanted to run the farm, and that development company made me a good offer. So I sold the place and bought this house. My daughter wanted me to move in with her, up on the north side of town. But I said no thanks to that. Me and old George are comfortable here.”

  The dog raised his black and tan head and thumped his tail against the carpet before settling back into slumber.

  I guessed that Andi would have been in transition from her sophomore to her junior year at the University of Colorado. Lester confirmed this.

  “Yes, Andrea had been going to college a couple of years when her dad died,” Lester said, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. “In fact, I think she was in summer school that year.”

  “Was she living here at home while she went to college?” I asked. “It’s certainly close enough to commute.”

  “Oh, yes, lots of people drive to the university every day. But I thought Andrea lived there in Boulder.” He stopped. “Well, I’m not sure. My wife would have known.” He said this last with a tinge of sadness that made it clear he missed his wife. I wondered how long they’d been married.

  “Weren’t there two Haskell daughters? One is married, I believe.”

  “Leanne,” Lester said. “She was four years older. She married that Sikowski boy from here in Longmont. I believe they live somewhere down in Jefferson County. Seems to me Estelle said he worked at the Federal Center in Lakewood.”

  I leaned toward him, pleased to learn that the Sikowski I was looking for came from Longmont. Now if I could just get a first name to narrow that list I’d copied from the Denver phone book. When I asked, Lester thought for a moment. “The name Steve comes to mind, but I’m not sure. Now, his dad owns a car dealership here. Sikowski Ford. On North Main. You can’t miss it. All you need to do is go over there and talk to his dad. I’m sure he can tell you where to find the boy.”

  “That would help considerably. Now, you said Estelle Haskell moved in with her sister after she sold the farm. But I gather that wasn’t here in Longmont.”

  “No, somewhere closer to Denver.”

  “Any idea where they’re living?”

  “My wife would have known,” he said, for the second time. “I think they stayed in touch for a while. Let me see if I can find it in her address book.” He got up and went back into the kitchen, where I heard him rummaging around in drawers. A moment later he came back, carrying an address book, the kind with three rings and a vinyl cover that was supposed to look like leather. He opened it to the section marked H and peered at the words written on the lined pages. “Here’s the book, but the only address I see is the farm, and that’s not good anymore, of course. There’s a phone number here, with Estelle’s name next to it.”

  “May I look?” I asked, holding out my hand. He nodded and handed over the book. The Longmont address for the Haskells, the farm, had long since been crossed out. Beneath this the name Estelle Haskell and a phone number had been written in blue ink.

  “This isn’t a Longmont exchange?” I asked.

  “No. I’m sure it’s somewhere in the Denver area. My wife would have known. Sorry, I’m just not good at keeping up with people.”

  “Mind if I use your phone? I have a credit card.”

  He waved his hand. “Oh, don’t worry about how much it costs. Just go ahead and make the call. Anything I can do to help. Phone’s in the kitchen.”

  I crossed the worn blue and white linoleum to a wall phone hanging next to the kitchen counter. At my feet were a couple of large blue plastic dog bowls, one full of water, the other licked clean. The phone number I’d punched in rang three times, then was picked up by an answering machine that told me Margaret and Estelle weren’t available to answer my call, but if I wanted to leave a message, I could wait for the beep. I hung up instead.

  Back in Lester’s living room I told the old farmer that there had been no answer. “That’s a shame. But you can try again later. Want some more coffee?”

  “No thanks. I’d better
be going. Maybe I can get some information at Sikowski Ford that will help me track down Andrea’s sister.”

  He seemed a bit regretful at seeing me go. He and George walked me out to my car, George primarily to raise a leg against a tree in the middle of the yard. Lester waved an arm at a neighbor as we went down the sidewalk. “There’s Mrs. MacDonald,” he said. “She might know about Estelle Haskell. Let me ask her.”

  We crossed the lawn to where the older woman, wearing a housedress and carrying a canvas shopping bag, had just opened the driver’s side door of her dark brown sedan. “Mrs. MacDonald, this is Jeri Howard,” Lester began. “She’s looking for Estelle Haskell.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for her daughter, Andrea,” I said, wanting to forestall any information that I was a private investigator, in case this sharp-eyed woman who was looking me up and down with great curiosity would be disinclined to talk. “Mr. Lester tells me Estelle Haskell now lives with her sister. Would you happen to know what the sister’s name is, or where they live?”

  She considered this for a moment, then spoke in a tart voice. “Well, I can’t help you with the daughter. But Estelle’s sister is Margaret Todd. And they live down in Broomfield.”

  Thirty-seven

  I FOUND SIKOWSKI FORD WHERE DEAN LESTER said I would, on North Main just past Seventeenth Avenue. Finding the elder Sikowski was more difficult. He wasn’t at the car dealership. I finally persuaded one of his employees, who was evidently disappointed that I didn’t want to buy a brand-new car, to tell me where I could locate his boss. Turned out Sikowski was taking a break at a restaurant about a block farther north.

  It was a typical coffee shop, with padded orange vinyl booths lining the wall to my right, tables in the middle, and a counter with stools on my left. The waitress behind the counter was working the cash register, and she barely glanced at me as I looked around for likely prospects. By now it was mid-afternoon. The lunchtime crowd had long since departed and it was too early for the dinner trade, so there were only a few customers in the place.

  The car salesman had given me a sketchy description. Sikowski was tall, had gray hair, and was wearing a blue suit. All the men I saw in the coffee shop were seated, so tall wouldn’t help me as a description. There were a couple of gray-haired men in blue suits. One was with a woman, the two of them sharing a table near the entrance. My eyes roved over them, dismissed him, then looked toward a booth midway toward the back. The man sitting there was alone, facing forward, and he was wearing a blue suit.

  “Gordon Sikowski?” 1 asked, walking over to the booth.

  He looked up from his coffee and the remains of a piece of pie. “You found him.” He had a high forehead and a thinning head of hair. Behind his friendly smile were a pair of narrowed hazel eyes and the unspoken question asking who I was.

  “Sit down, have some apple pie. It’s the best in town.” I slid into the seat opposite him. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “My name’s Jeri Howard,” I said. I decided to be straight with him. I took a business card from my purse and handed it across the table. “I’m looking for a woman named Andrea Haskell. I understand your son is married to her sister.”

  “That’s true,” he said as he examined the card. Then he pushed away the plate that had held his pie, the pale brown crockery sliding across the yellow Formica surface of the table. “Why are you looking for her?”

  “That’s something I’d prefer to discuss with her.” I leaned back against the padded orange seat.

  “But you don’t know where she is,” he said, looking cagey.

  At that moment the waitress appeared at the table, holding a coffeepot and a brown mug. “No, thanks,” I told her. She shrugged, freshened Sikowski’s cup, and padded away.

  “I hope you might be able to tell me where she is,” I said, “if you know. If you don’t, I’d like to know where to locate your son and his wife.”

  “Well,” he said, drawing out the word. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a great respecter of privacy.”

  “So am I, Mr. Sikowski. But this is important.”

  “I suppose it must be, if you came all the way back here from Oakland, California.” He mulled this over for a moment. Then he cocked one gray eyebrow at me. “She was in some kind of trouble, wasn’t she? Back there. I thought that was all over with.”

  He waited for me to respond. I wondered how much he knew about what had happened back in California. “Perhaps it is,” I said. “Let’s just say I’m trying to forestall a recurrence.”

  “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

  “Look, Mr. Sikowski, I know she lives somewhere in the Denver metropolitan area. I know at some time your son and his wife lived in Jefferson County and your son worked for the Federal Center in Lakewood. Sooner or later I’ll track them down. A name like Steve Sikowski will be easier to find than Smith or Jones. But it would save time and make my job a whole lot easier if you’d just tell me.”

  I was going by what Dean Lester had told me. I didn’t know for sure that the younger Sikowski’s name was Steve or that he and his wife still lived where they had fifteen years ago when Andi Haskell was in college. My words must have hit some mark, though. I saw a flicker in Sikowski’s eyes.

  “I don’t know where she lives,” he said, his voice a little less friendly than it had been. “And if you’re such a hotshot private eye, I guess you can just go looking for my son. Maybe he won’t be as easy to find as you think.”

  Well, that backfired, I told myself as Sikowski stood up and walked over to the coffee shop counter. “How much do I owe you, Aggie?” I heard him ask the waitress. She named a figure and he said, “There you are, and keep the change.”

  I waited until he’d left the shop, then I picked up the menu that was stuck between the salt and pepper shakers, thinking I’d better eat something while I was there. I scanned the offerings and waved at the waitress.

  “Mr. Sikowski recommended the apple pie,” I told her.

  She smiled. “That’s his favorite. Has a piece every day about this time. Want to try a slice?”

  “I think I’ll have some lunch first.” Outside, the sky was darkening, and my stomach reminded me that I needed something other than those pastries I’d consumed at Dean Lester’s house. “Is this turkey sandwich made with the real thing? Carved off the bird, I mean, not that pressed stuff.” She assured me it was, so I ordered turkey on whole wheat, a large iced tea, and the pie.

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask Mr. Sikowski about Steve and Leanne,” I said, as she wrote down my order. “Haven’t seen them in a while. I wonder, does Steve still work for the federal government? Are they still in Lakewood?”

  “Oh, no, hon,” the waitress said as she moved toward the kitchen. “Steve works for the state now, but Leanne’s still teaching school. They built a nice big house, out in the country, west of Arvada.”

  Sikowski was right about the apple pie. After I finished the sandwich, I polished off a big wedge. Then I visited the coffee shop’s bathroom before leaving. In my car I consulted my map.

  I’d passed through the edge of Broomfield earlier in the day when I drove from Denver to Boulder. The town was at the southeastern corner of Boulder County, part of the town straddling into Adams County to the east and Jefferson County to the south.

  I started the car and drove south on U.S. 287. As the afternoon wound toward evening the sun edged toward the peaks of the Rockies. Once it slipped behind the mountains it created an early twilight. When I reached Broomfield, I pulled the rental car off the highway into the parking lot of a convenience store, cut the engine, and got out, looking for a phone. There was one, just to the right of the convenience store’s entrance, and it looked like the phone directory was intact. I leafed through the pages and found what I was looking for, a listing for Margaret Todd and an address on Emerald Street.

  It was a one-story house, constructed of brick, lik
e so many of the homes I’d seen in Colorado. In the fading daylight it looked yellow, with brown trim and a well-groomed lawn and flower beds. There was no car in the driveway leading to a closed single garage. The house itself had a shut-up look, beige drapes drawn across a picture window that faced west. I parked at the curb and walked up several shallow cement steps to the porch. I couldn’t tell by looking at the mail slot next to the front door whether the mail had been collected.

  I rang the bell. No answer. I listened for a moment and didn’t hear anything. Then I walked next door and rang that bell. This time my summons got me a young woman about my own age, who looked as though I’d interrupted her dinner preparations.

  “Mrs. Haskell and Mrs. Todd,” she repeated, after I’d asked my question about the whereabouts of her neighbors. “They’ve been gone a couple of days. Couldn’t say where they went, or when they’ll be back. I do know they like to go up to Central City or Cripple Creek to gamble.”

  I thanked her and walked slowly back to my rental car. The towns the neighbor had mentioned were old mining communities up in the mountains. They dated back to Colorado’s gold rush, which had come about ten years after California’s. In recent years the residents had voted in casino gambling.

  I was tired, not relishing the prospect of driving any farther when it seemed that I’d spent the whole afternoon on the road. But I had to give Arvada a try. On my map Arvada looked much larger than Broomfield. I stopped at a generic chain motel near the intersection of Wadsworth and Eighty-eighth, produced my credit card, and acquired a room with a double bed and a phone. I started playing telephone roulette with the Sikowskis who had Arvada interchanges, pushing back that little voice that told me it was quite possible the Sikowskis I was looking for had an unlisted number.