A Credible Threat

by Janet Dawson

  I HAD ENOUGH OF SITTING AROUND HOSPITALS when my grandmother died. Spending the next few hours hanging around Boulder Community Hospital, inside or out, until Andrea Haskell Wood got off work didn’t seem like an acceptable option. Besides, I was hungry. I crossed Broadway in search of food, finding a deli inside a small supermarket. Then, with a paper-wrapped pastrami on rye and a bottle of mineral water in hand, I walked back to the hospital parking lot.

  I drove west into the mountains. As Canyon Boulevard narrowed from four lanes to two, it became Colorado Highway 119, snaking up the canyon at the side of Boulder Creek. I pulled off the highway just past Four Mile Canyon Drive and found a spot by the creek to eat my lunch. Spring brought snowmelt, and the creek ran high, water rushing past me on the rocky creek bed, which still had spots of ice visible at the opposite edge of the stream, where the sun had not yet reached to warm them. I leaned down, stuck a hand in the water, and felt its icy chill.

  When I’d finished my sandwich, I balled up the debris and stuck it in the litter bag the rental company had provided along with the car. I wheeled back onto the road and kept going up into the mountains, stopping once again when I saw the sign for Boulder Falls. I hiked back up into a notch on the north side of the roadway, careful where I stepped on a path still slick here and there with ice. When I reached the falls I was rewarded by the sight of tons of water rushing and roaring over the rocky cliff.

  I reached Nederland, some twenty miles west of Boulder, by mid-afternoon. The town itself was on the other side of the Barker Meadow Reservoir, which contained a huge amount of water behind its dam. As I had a cup of coffee at a restaurant whose windows afforded a magnificent view of the snow-covered peaks all around me, I found myself wishing I had more time to explore. As it was, I needed to head back for Boulder.

  By four o’clock I’d parked once again in the lot at the hospital and found a bathroom inside. Then I hung out in the hospital gift shop until I saw Andi, fifteen minutes later, her gray coat draped over one arm as she walked toward me. We went outside. The temperature had dropped as the sun disappeared behind the mountains that loomed so close, draping Boulder in an early twilight and making me glad I’d worn my jacket. She too felt the chill, and stopped to put on the coat.

  “Your spring weather isn’t what I’m used to,” I said. “Back home it’s rainy but warmer than this.”

  “I remember,” she said. “I lived in the Bay Area for a long time. This spring weather is deceptive. We sometimes get blizzards before May.” She walked down the steps. “There’s a place across the street where we can get some coffee.”

  I followed her to a place called Vic’s Espresso and News, next to a wine shop in a shopping center on the other side of Broadway. We settled at a table near the front door, with a latte for me and a mocha for her. I sipped mine and burned my tongue. Andi made no move to reach for her cup.

  “I had three phone messages waiting for me when I got back from lunch,” she said slowly. “One from my sister, warning me that you were trying to find me. Ditto from my mother. And one from Aunt Maggie, saying I should hear what you have to say.”

  “I take it you’ve decided to do that.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” She stared at the mound of whipped cream atop her coffee, then gave me a quick sidelong glance from her blue eyes. “But I warn you, now I have to pick up my daughter at day care. I can’t stay long.”

  “I saw her picture at your mother’s house. Pretty little girl. What’s her name?”

  “Alice.” She smiled.

  “How long have you been married?” I asked.

  “Four years. His name’s Keith. I met him right after I moved back here. Right here at the hospital, about three weeks after I got this job. He sells medical equipment. He’s on the road a lot.”

  “Does he know about Richard Bradfield?”

  She frowned and reached for her cup, avoiding an answer for the moment as she sipped her mocha. “I gave him an edited version.”

  “How edited? As edited as the one you gave your family?”

  “Look,” she said, setting down the cup. “I have a life here. A damned good one. It’s the most important thing I have. I don’t want to screw it up.”

  “But you’re afraid of Bradfield.”

  “Aren’t you?” she countered, piercing me with her eyes.

  “Of course I am. I’d like to stop him before he damages anyone else’s life. Including yours.”

  She considered this for a moment, using a long spoon to stir the whipped cream into her coffee. When she spoke again, the words came reluctantly. “I don’t know how I can help you.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Bradfield. How did it start?”

  “I got sucked into something bad,” she said slowly. “And I didn’t realize how bad until it was over.” She compressed her lips. Then she sighed. “I came to San Francisco after I graduated from college. I lived in the Marina for a while. I’d worked at a few secretarial, administrative assistant jobs in the city, mostly in the Financial district. I was getting bored with it, though. Then I saw the ad for this job in Oakland, for a lot of money. That’s what attracted me. The salary. It was so much more than what I’d been making with my other jobs. I applied, I got hired. That was ten years ago.”

  “And your relationship with Bradfield?”

  Her mouth tightened again, as though she were reluctant to speak of him. “He was like a big spider. Sitting in the middle of a web. I got tangled up in that web. I did some things I’m not proud of, things I’d just as soon forget.”

  The memories were painful for her, I could see it on her face. It appeared she’d done a lot of soul-searching over the past five years. Time and distance, and a new husband and baby, will do that. I wondered if the things she wanted to forget encompassed only her affair with Bradfield and the fraud he’d perpetrated on his clients. Or was there something in all that soul-searching that involved the murder of Stephanie Bradfield?

  She took another sip of coffee before continuing. “A very attractive, well-paid web, of course. And he was a handsome, self-assured spider. It didn’t happen right away. It was about a year after I took the job. I became more and more attracted to him, emotionally involved.”

  “And sexually.”

  She didn’t respond right away. “If it means anything,” she said finally, “I had deluded myself that he’d leave his wife for me. Oldest story in the book, of course. I knew they had problems. That they’d separated before, then gotten back together. For his daughter’s sake, Richard said. When I got involved with him, he told me how unhappy he was in his marriage, that the only reason he stayed with her was Melissa. I didn’t know he’d abused his wife, not until later.”

  “After Stephanie Bradfield was murdered, and Cordelia Ramsey hired the Seville Agency,” I finished. “Everything fell like a row of dominoes. When the dominoes stopped falling, and Bradfield went to prison, you sold your condo and headed back to Colorado.”

  “There certainly wasn’t anything left for me in California. The Alameda County D.A. thought I was involved with Richard in defrauding those old people and that penny stock business. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was appalled when I realized what was going on. I was naive, yes. I thought Richard and Mr. Kacherian were legitimate businessmen. But I had nothing to do with any fraud. Or with harassing Cordelia Ramsey.”

  She paused to sip some coffee. “That didn’t stop all of them from going after me. The full-court press from the district attorneys in Alameda and Marin, and the IRS thrown in for good measure. When Richard was arrested, Bradfield Investments folded and I didn’t have a job. I did some temp work, but I also had to borrow money from Aunt Maggie. I didn’t ask Mother for help, because I didn’t want to explain it to her. I went through two years of pure hell, in debt up to my ears. And I couldn’t leave until it was over. Every penny I got out of selling my condo went to pay my bills. I had nothing left by the time I moved back here.”

  “What did you tell your
family?”

  “My mother? The bare minimum. Can’t you just picture her reaction if I told her I was that man’s mistress? My sister knows more, but not everything. Aunt Maggie knows all the gory details.” Andi shook her head. “I don’t like to talk about it. For obvious reasons.”

  “When did you break off the relationship?”

  “I didn’t.” The words came out in a whisper. “The police did it for me.”

  “You are afraid of him.”

  “Of course I am.” Her mouth quivered slightly. “When you told me he was out of jail, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach.”

  I spread my hands wide. “But according to you, he doesn’t have anything to fear from you. Unless it was your testimony at one of his trials.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that. I only told the truth. I was subpoenaed. I had to testify, I thought Sam Kacherian was just another client, one of Richard’s occasional golf partners. After that day I testified in court, I thought Richard would realize I didn’t mean to hurt him. But that was just more of Andi being naive, wasn’t it? I saw it in his eyes when I left the witness stand that day and walked past the table where he and his lawyer were sitting.”

  I nodded. People like Bradfield didn’t care much about the truth or what other people were compelled to do. They only care about themselves and how the world affects them.

  Andi took another sip of her mocha, then held the tall glass between her hands. She shivered, and I didn’t think it was because of the blast of air that came through the door when a customer entered the coffee shop.

  “You can’t imagine what it’s like to learn that someone you once cared for is a monster,” she said. “Someone who defrauded people who’d entrusted their money to him. Someone who could stalk Cordelia Ramsey. Someone who could...”

  “Murder his wife?” The words dropped onto the table with a thud. Andi stared at her coffee as though she expected some demon to rise from the cup.

  “He swore he didn’t kill her,” she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper. “I believed him. Probably because I wanted to believe him.”

  I stirred my latte with a spoon. “But you’ve had eight years to think about it, haven’t you, Andi? Have you come to any conclusions?”

  “Oh, yes, I have.” Her eyes came up to meet mine. “Would you like to hear them?”

  Forty-one

  “HE DID KILL HIS WIFE,” I SAID.

  “He wasn’t with me. I lied to the police.”

  Andi Haskell took a deep breath. She probably needed it. Her words came slowly, carefully, as though she were having trouble getting them past the tight lines around her mouth.

  “That day at Pebble Beach... After we met with the client at his house on Seventeen Mile Drive, we went back to the lodge. That was about three. I thought Richard and I were going to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening together, maybe stroll around Carmel and have a romantic dinner at some secluded restaurant. But...” She shook her head. “Not to be. As we were walking from the parking lot toward the lodge, who should we run into but Sam Kacherian and a friend of his.”

  “Yes, we knew Kacherian was there in Pebble Beach,” I said. “We figured it was a planned encounter, not chance.”

  “They played it that way,” Andi said. “Chance meeting, I mean. Kacherian and Richard were all hail-fellow-well-met, gee-I-didn’t-expect-to-run-into-you. That sort of thing. At the time, I believed it. I don’t believe it now. I was the beard, so Richard could meet Kacherian.” She smiled, but she wasn’t amused.

  “Anyway, Kacherian had someone with him, another businessman. They invited Richard to play golf and he accepted. I was disappointed. But I didn’t say anything. That was about three-thirty. I asked Richard about dinner. Order room service, he said, and he’d be there about seven-thirty. Richard went to his room to change. I spent the afternoon at the spa, getting a massage and a facial. I went back to my room sometime after six and ordered dinner.”

  I recalled the statement of the room service waiter who’d brought the meals to Andi Haskell’s room. According to his watch, he’d delivered them at 7:35. Melissa Bradfield had discovered her dying mother about eight-fifteen that night. The coroner estimated Stephanie Bradfield had been stabbed sometime during the previous hour, perhaps about the same time Andi answered the door in Pebble Beach wearing her blue silk robe. Richard Bradfield was supposedly behind that door, which would have made it impossible for him to be in Oakland, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Pebble Beach.

  But Andi had just admitted lying about that.

  “What time did Bradfield show up?” I asked.

  “After nine. It may even have been nine-thirty. When he was late, I was upset, though not surprised. I figured he was talking business with someone and had lost track of the time. That happened a lot. Now that I’ve had a few years to look back on it, I realize I was always playing second fiddle.” Bitterness colored her voice.

  “I’d been looking forward to that trip to Pebble Beach since Richard mentioned it a month before. I’d learned the drill, you see. Being involved with a married man meant I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time with him. I learned to appreciate those times when I could be with him. Certainly never on holidays or weekends. I was afraid to be demanding or greedy for his time, for fear I’d lose him.”

  Now she shook her head. “I look back on it now and wonder how I could have deluded myself so thoroughly. I doubt that he ever really cared.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “But you don’t want to hear about that. You want to know about Pebble Beach. I’m not sure exactly what time Richard finally arrived. Except that it was a long time after seven-thirty.”

  “What did he say when he got there?”

  Her eyes got a distant look, as though she were trying to recall Bradfield’s exact words. “He was contrite, of course. He always was. When I asked where he’d been, he told me he, Kacherian, and Kacherian’s friend had been in the bar, talking business. But he asked me not to say anything to anyone, because the three of them were putting together a real estate deal and they wanted to keep it under wraps until it was certain. Later I thought he didn’t want me to say anything about their meeting because of that stock scheme.”

  “Now you don’t think so?”

  She shook her head. “It was his wife’s death Richard was worried about. I didn’t see him from about three-thirty until after nine. He would have had plenty of time to drive from Pebble Beach to Oakland and back again. He could have killed her.”

  “But you were his alibi.”

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly. “He used me. I let him use me.”

  I let that subject pass on to another. “The man who was with Kacherian. This is the first I’ve heard of him. Do you have any idea who he was? Can you describe him?”

  Andi tilted her head to one side. “Kacherian introduced him, said he was from Orange County. He was a good-looking older man. Tall, gray hair, brown eyes, I think. Distinguished, in his mid-fifties, I would guess. Very dapper and self-assured, as though he’d be comfortable in blue jeans or a business suit.”

  I sat up straighter. The man she was describing sounded a lot like someone I’d met recently.

  “He said something about wanting to look at antiques later,” Andi continued. “Maybe he was a collector. His name was... let’s see... a president’s name, or close to it. Tom. That’s it. Tom Jeffries.”

  When Andi left the coffee shop to pick up her daughter at day care, I took up residence at the nearest phone booth. Wayne Hobart wasn’t at his desk in the Oakland Police Department Homicide Section. But I found Rita Lydecker in San Rafael.

  “Drop whatever you’re doing,” I told her, “and find out everything you can about a man named Tom Jeffries. He’s in his late fifties or early sixties. Eight years ago he was in business down in Orange County. He retired sometime last year. Right now he owns an antique store in Fort Bragg.”

  “And you’ll tell me what this is about when you get back,” Rita sa
id. “I’m on it.”

  I argued with myself all the way to the Denver airport. Was it possible that Tom Jeffries had simply retired and moved to Fort Bragg, where he then met Perdita Paxton? That could very well be all there was to it, plain truth and coincidence. Coincidences happen all the time. And plain truth? Less often, to my cynical investigator’s mind. Tom Jeffries’s retirement and move to the north coast had coincided with Richard Bradfield’s parole.

  Still, I thought, I could be overreacting to Andi Haskell’s revelation. So, the man had once played golf with Sam Kacherian and Richard Bradfield. And presumably had discussed some sort of deal with them. So what? That didn’t mean he was a bosom friend. Just business. That’s all it could be, just business.

  I didn’t recall Jeffries’s name coming up when the Seville Agency uncovered the penny stock scam involving Kacherian’s company, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved or that he didn’t know about it. Once Enrol had passed the information to our client’s attorney, the agency’s involvement in the investigation had passed to the district attorney’s office. Jeffries might have been a peripheral player whose participation had come up later. Or maybe there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Even if Jeffries had been implicated, I told myself, that didn’t necessarily mean he was now entangled in some sort of conspiracy to get Perdita Paxton.

  From what Andi Haskell said, it was Kacherian whom Jeffries knew, not Bradfield. Besides, Perdita said she hadn’t told Tom Jeffries anything about her life before she moved to Mendocino. But did he know she was really Cordelia Ramsey? Did he know that Richard Bradfield was suspected of killing his wife that day he and Kacherian saw Bradfield in Pebble Beach? In a way, Jeffries and Kacherian were Bradfield’s backup alibi, one he could have brought into play if Andi Haskell hadn’t told the police her lover had been with her when his wife was stabbed to death in Oakland. But Andi had come through.

  I didn’t have answers, only a feeling of disquiet when I thought of Perdita and Jeffries and their budding relationship. Richard Bradfield was an ingenious killer with a long list of names and grievances. He’d decided it was his turn for payback. I didn’t want Perdita’s name ticked off that list.