A Credible Threat

by Janet Dawson

  “I don’t know if you remember me,” I said. “Jeri Howard, investigator with the Seville Agency. I talked with you about the Bradfield case.”

  The look on her face told me she remembered very well indeed.

  “Oh, God. That mess.” The phone rang again and she answered it, with the same professional pleasant voice as before. Then she frowned at me again. “I hoped I’d never hear his name again. What do you want now?”

  “I need to find Andi Haskell.”

  Now her face turned incredulous. “What makes you think I’d know where she is?”

  A man in a business suit came through the law firm’s doors and advised Stella Contreras that he had an appointment. She took his name and called the attorney he was there to see. Once he’d been ushered into the inner sanctum, Stella Contreras flashed me an exasperated look over her console. “Look, I’ve got a lunch break coming up in about half an hour. If you want to talk with me, wait until then.”

  I took a seat in the reception area and leafed through a couple of magazines. When the relief receptionist showed up, Stella Contreras took her handbag from a drawer in the reception desk and joined me at the door. “Forty-five minutes,” she said, glancing at her watch. “That’s all I’ve got. Let’s go downstairs.”

  There was a cafeteria on the second floor of the Ordway Building. I offered to buy her lunch, and she accepted, opting for a bowl of vegetable soup and a cup of herbal tea. I took coffee and led the way to a small table near the entrance.

  She dunked a lemon-scented tea bag into the hot water and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I haven’t seen Andi Haskell since I quit that job. Right after Bradfield was arrested. Why do you want to know, anyway?”

  “Bradfield’s out of prison,” I told her.

  I saw a little frisson of worry in her eyes. But Stella Contreras had less to fear from Bradfield than did the rest of us, who’d helped bring him down. Contreras had only worked for him a short time, and she’d been a functionary, not involved in the day-to-day workings of his business. Not like Andi Haskell.

  “They should have kept him locked up,” she said. She picked up her spoon and dipped it into her soup. “After what he did to that poor woman, his sister-in-law. Defrauding all those people. And I know the police think he killed his wife. I’m glad to be out of that, I’ll tell you. But what makes you think I know where Andi Haskell is?”

  “I’ve got a line on her.” I sipped my coffee. “She sold her condo and moved to Denver. At least, her forwarding address is a post office box in Denver. I know you worked in that office less than a year. But during that time, did Andi Haskell ever say anything about where she was from? Did she ever mention any family? Any roots? Any connections?”

  Stella frowned and wrinkled her nose again, keeping an eye on the clock. She blew on her tea and took a swallow while she thought about it.

  “Andi liked to ski,” she said finally. “She was up in the Sierras every chance she got. There was a snapshot on her desk. Her, on a ski trip. She was wearing a gold knit cap and a gray sweatshirt with a gold buffalo on it. Isn’t that the symbol of the University of Colorado?”

  “Colorado Buffaloes,” I repeated, nodding. “Big Eight Conference. She went to school there, in Boulder.”

  “I thought so.” Stella shrugged. “Don’t ask me where that came from. She must have mentioned it at some point. But that was a long time ago. She’d be in her mid-thirties now.”

  “Was she alone in the photograph?”

  Stella concentrated on her soup for a moment before answering. “There was a woman with her. Tina something. A friend from college or high school maybe. I think this Tina lived here in the Bay Area and they kept in touch.” She consulted the clock again and took another mouthful of soup. “You know, talking about college, I think she commuted to class. Once, right before everything happened, I was talking about my daughter, going to school up at Chico, living in the dorm. Andi said something about not being involved in that living-on-campus experience, because she’d lived at home and commuted. Family finances, that sort of thing.”

  “So she might be from a town near Boulder, Colorado.” If that was the case, it would narrow my search somewhat.

  “Her mother was a widow. Worked as a salesclerk, I think.” Stella said the words quite suddenly, then looked at me, perplexed.. “I can’t believe I remembered this much. It’s not like I knew Andi that well.”

  “But things come up in conversation,” I said. There was something about getting a witness talking that helped those little bits of information float to the surface. “Do you remember anything else about her friends, other than the one named Tina?”

  “No, no. Just Tina. I wish I could remember her last name. But I didn’t even know Andi that well. I picked up on the fact that she was having an affair with Bradfield. Maybe that’s why I kept her at a distance.” She sighed and looked at the clock, then turned her attention back to her lunch. “Sorry. That’s all I remember.”

  I stood up. “Here’s my card. If you recall anything else, please call me. It’s important that I locate her as soon as possible.”

  “Is she in some kind of trouble?” Stella Contreras asked.

  “I hope not,” I said. “But I’d feel a whole lot better if I could talk with her.”

  Thirty-four

  TINA SOMETHING RANG A BELL.

  In fact, I’d seen the name earlier that day in Errol’s files. It was on the loan application Andi Haskell had filled out when she bought her condominium.

  The Seville Agency had dug out the financial information on that earlier real estate transaction to see if Bradfield had purchased the place for Haskell. He hadn’t, but he’d given her a liberal salary and a big Christmas bonus that went right into the down payment.

  At the time Haskell was buying the condo, she’d written down the name of a personal reference, one Tina Kellner, who worked at a bank in San Francisco. There was a business address and phone number. I picked up the phone, hoping she was the woman in the ski picture Stella Contreras had mentioned.

  Unfortunately, as I discovered when I tried the number, the bank had been gobbled up by another bank, about four years ago. That was something that happened a lot these days. I tried the surviving bank and eventually learned that Tina Kellner was one of those superfluous, redundant employees who get laid off when companies gobble other companies. The woman on the other end of the phone, in the bank’s Human Resources Department, told me she had no idea where Kellner had gone after that.

  I hung up the phone and reached for the telephone directories stacked on the bookshelf behind my desk. The San Francisco listings contained several Kellners, but none of them was answering the phone this afternoon. The ones who had machines weren’t forthcoming with any information that would help me pinpoint anyone named Tina.

  I heaved a sigh, stared at the clock, and debated what to do next. For all I knew, Tina Kellner had an unlisted number. Or she could have married and moved to L.A.

  I locked my office and went down to the lot where I kept my Toyota. Then I headed across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, where I combed through the property tax records until I found Tina Kellner. She owned a condominium on Leavenworth Street on Russian Hill, in one of the newer buildings. It took me longer to find a parking space than it did to determine that she wasn’t home. At least no one answered when I buzzed her unit. I tried buzzing her neighbors instead. On my third try I got the answer I needed.

  “I remember when she got that job,” Tina Kellner told me later that afternoon.

  We were suspended midway up a San Francisco financial district high-rise, the headquarters of Pacific Gas & Electric, on Beale Street. It was late, the light fading. When I looked out the window I could see heavy traffic on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, as commuters headed out of the city, toward home.

  “She was so excited,” Kellner continued. “Personal assistant to Mr. Moneybags. If only we’d known then what was going to happen. She’d
have run the other way.”

  “She ran away afterward.”

  I turned away from the window and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Kellner’s desk. It was beige, like the rest of the furniture in her office. The neutral color was enlivened here and there with touches of green and blue, from the pottery on the small table next to me to the framed poster from a Napa Valley winery on the wall between the door and the window.

  “Who could blame her for running?” Kellner said, thrumming her fingers on the smooth polished wood of her desk. “Dragged through the papers like that. After she got involved with Bradfield, I saw less and less of her. It had been well over a year since I’d seen her. Then one morning I picked up my Chronicle and there she was, in the middle of this scandal over in Oakland. Poor kid. So I called her. She was glad to hear from me.”

  She stopped, reflecting on events that had taken place years ago. Then the intercom on Kellner’s phone buzzed. She picked up the receiver. “Yes?” She listened for a moment, then said, ‘Tell him I’m in a meeting and hold my calls. Thanks.”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “I haven’t talked with Andi Haskell since she left the Bay Area. Her choice, I guess, not a surprising one either. I don’t know if I can help you find her. Or if I should.”

  “Would it make any difference if I told you Richard Bradfield is out of prison?”

  Now Kellner grimaced. “Yes, it would. Do you think she’s in some kind of danger?”

  “Possibly,” I said. “Just tell me what you know about her. If she went back to Colorado, I need to know where to start looking for her. Where was her hometown?”

  “I’m not sure I remember,” Kellner said, after thinking about it for a moment. “Andi was an acquaintance rather than a friend. Besides, she was the kind of person who didn’t reveal much of herself.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “During our last year at the university, on a ski trip. Then we both moved out here and ran into each other at some alumni thing. We stayed in touch because of the C.U. connection. She never talked about home much. Her father was a farmer. But he died when Andi was in college. I don’t know if her mother’s still there.”

  “So it was a rural community,” I commented. “Would she go back there?”

  Kellner shrugged. “I’m not sure. She liked the Denver-Boulder area. And she’d want to be close enough to the mountains to ski. She’s probably in Denver.”

  “That jibes with what the real estate agent told me. A post office box in Denver.”

  “Her sister lived in Denver,” Kellner said suddenly. “Older sister. Her name’s Leanne. She’s married to a man whose name ends in ‘ski.’ Russian or Polish. Andi used to joke and say she should have married him, just for the ‘ski.’” She furrowed her brow, then shook her head. “Can’t think of the name. Maybe it’ll come to me. I’ve got your numbers. I’ll call you if it does.”

  “I talked with someone else who worked in Bradfield’s office. She says Andi lived at home while going to college.”

  “That’s true. She didn’t live on campus. My recollection is that she lived with an aunt and drove back and forth every day. But I’ll be damned if I can remember where.”

  I probed further but was unable to elicit any more information from Tina Kellner. I thanked her and made my way down to the lobby. Driving back to Oakland, I pulled together the threads I had so far. The town where Haskell had lived during her college days must be close enough to Boulder to commute. Whether that was the farming community where she grew up or the home of an aunt was open to speculation.

  I unlocked the door to my office, checked my answering machine, and discovered that the red light held steady. No messages.

  I pulled out my map stash and dug around in the box until I found a map of the state of Colorado. I unfolded it, spread it out on the surface of my desk, and stared at the pale yellow shape that denoted Denver and the smaller dot that was Boulder, hugging the edge of the Rockies. With my finger I drew an invisible half circle around Boulder, then looked at the names of the towns within a likely commuting radius. Most of them were in Boulder County. That’s where I’d start.

  I picked up the phone and called United, making a reservation on an early morning flight to Denver. Then I went home to pack a few things. Ordinarily I’d have had to make arrangements for someone to take care of the cats, but they were still at Dr. Prentice’s office. I was just sitting down to a solitary dinner when Tina Kellner called.

  “Sikowski,” she said without preamble. “Andi Haskell’s sister is married to a guy named Sikowski. Don’t ask me what wrinkle of my brain that was hiding in. And I think you may be looking for a town that starts with an L.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When I got home from work I went through some old photo albums. I found some pictures of Andi. In one of them she’s wearing an old letter jacket, blue and white, with a big L.”

  Thirty-five

  IT WAS STILL DARK THURSDAY WHEN I PARKED my car in the long-term lot at Oakland International Airport. I carried my gray nylon bag into the terminal and walked up to the United counter to pick up my ticket. Then I headed for the gate, where I consumed a cup of coffee and read a paperback mystery while I waited to board.

  I located my seat, on the right side just ahead of the wing, then stashed my bag in the overhead compartment. Once all the passengers had boarded and were properly cinched in place, the big jet backed away from the concourse and taxied into position. After a brief pause, as though gathering strength for the two-and-a-half-hour flight, the jet blistered down the runway and took off, asphalt pavement giving way to dark blue water as we angled over San Francisco Bay, turned sharply, and headed east over the Central Valley, toward the rising sun.

  I settled back on the cushions, opened my paperback, and tried to ignore the small child behind me who was rhythmically kicking my seat. Finally the kid stopped, admonished by his mother. I read, periodically distracted by the scenery far below my little window. The peaks of the Sierra Nevada were still white with snow. I saw a lake below, its blue water free of ice, a bare shore showing below the waterline, and a dam visible at the far end. The surrounding slopes, blue-green with trees, were brushed by wispy trails of cloud. I saw remote canyons hidden between folds of rock, then another lake, covered with ice reflecting the sun.

  By the time the flight attendants had made their way up and down the aisle, proffering beverages and a euphemistically named snack, we were east of the Sierras and over the Great Basin that encompasses much of Nevada and Utah. The ground below looked like thin, worn brownish-gray velvet, humped and rolling, dotted here and there with trees. Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert looked tan and sandy, with large uneven salt flats.

  I remembered the old saw about the Mormons: if they had approached Salt Lake City from the west instead of the east, they would have turned back. Still, it was beautiful, even if it was a bit desolate.

  More mountains appeared to the east, faint shadows that grew larger as the jet ate up distance. From the air the western slope of Colorado’s Rockies was an arid broken landscape. The word “badlands” leaped into my mind as I gazed down on rugged bluffs and ridges, dusty red-brown earth in the broad sweep of valleys between networks of peaks and canyons, like a moonscape, a rocky rift zone, changed by geologic shifts over thousands of years. Uneven ribbons of reddish earth alternated with gray-brown layers of sediment and rock in what looked like an ancient riverbed. Was that dusty winding ribbon a road? A stream? I couldn’t tell. Then I saw a straight narrow ribbon, with tiny cars moving along it, and in the distance an equally miniature town, laid out in a neat grid, surrounded by larger squares of cultivated land, roofs of buildings glittering in the sun.

  The mountains loomed closer, dark blue-gray where there was vegetation, brown rock where they were bare. Finally I saw high snowcapped peaks and white clouds. Below there was a large pear-shaped lake, its narrow end butting up against a steep slope, the layer of ice over the water
pale blue and dusted with snow.

  This was the Continental Divide, where the mountains look as though they never lost their white cover. Then we flew into clouds and I could see nothing outside the tiny window except atmosphere that resembled cotton candy. Above me the light flashed, indicating that passengers should fasten seat belts. The pilot came on the intercom, with a deliberately cheery voice announcing that we would be experiencing some turbulence as we neared Denver. Suddenly I saw snow softening jagged peaks and the dark blue-gray folds of mountains as the jet came down from the cloud cover, bucking and bouncing over frozen lakes with silvery ice.

  Then we were out of the clouds and into a bright blue bowl of a sky, flying over brown and gold hills dotted with towns and bisected by thin ribbons of highways. Through the window and off to my right I saw the skyscraper towers of Denver, the Queen City of the Plains.

  It had been several years since I’d flown to Colorado, so this was my first glimpse of the new airport. Its white peak roof resembled a vast circus tent on the high plains northeast of town. Once we’d touched down and taxied to the terminal, I waited until a majority of the passengers had grabbed their bags and herded themselves toward the door. Then I stood up, stretched, and pulled my bag from the overhead.

  Inside the B concourse I found a phone and checked the Denver metropolitan area listings for Haskells and Sikowskis. It was past ten in the morning and I didn’t have any luck finding any of them at home. I took the lower-level train that ran between the various concourses and found the car rental counters, where I picked up the compact sedan I’d reserved.

  A short time later I’d made my way to U.S. 36, and sped northwest through the Denver suburbs and the outlying towns. Finally, the sedan crested a hill and headed down into Boulder, which sprawled along the edge of the front range of the Rockies. It had been a while since I was there but I remembered some of the landmarks. The Flatirons, smooth brown rock surfaces, towered above the redundantly named Table Mesa in the southern part of town. Directly ahead of me I saw a large cluster of red sandstone buildings, the University of Colorado.