A Credible Threat Read online

  Praise for Janet Dawson and her Jeri Howard mysteries!

  Kindred Crimes

  “A welcome addition to this tough genre.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Till the Old Men Die

  “Dawson keeps suspense and interest at high pitch.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Take a Number

  “Entertaining, enlightening, and most satisfying.”

  —Mostly Murder

  Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean

  “Mother/daughter feuds, family solidarity, an ecological mystery: Dawson blends these familiar ingredients with a chef’s élan.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Nobody’s Child

  “A rich plum pudding of a story sprinkled throughout with memorable characters.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  By Janet Dawson

  KINDRED CRIMES

  TILL THE OLD MEN DIE

  TAKE A NUMBER

  DON’T TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN

  NOBODY’S CHILD

  A CREDIBLE THREAT

  A

  CREDIBLE

  THREAT

  A Jeri Howard Mystery

  Janet Dawson

  Copyright © 1996 by Janet Dawson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in criticial articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Sue Trowbridge

  ISBN 978-0-9834031-5-9 (ePub)

  ISBN 0-449-22357-4

  First Hardcover Edition: November 1996

  First Mass Market Edition: November 1997

  For Spats

  Acknowledgments

  A WRITER GLEANS INFORMATION FROM MANY people while writing a book. I would like to thank the following people for their assistance:

  Andi Shecter; Peter Beall; Kim and Brent McSwain; Lt. Ralph Lacer and Sgt. Dan Mercado, Oakland Police Department; Sgt. Steve Engler and Sgt. Kay Lantow, Berkeley Police Department; Sgt. Marc Mitchell, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department; Kevin Fletcher of Gallery Mendocino; Carolyn Clement of the Cheshire Bookshop, Fort Bragg; Lisa Bryan, Charles Cochran, and Bill Grebe at the Boulder County Courthouse, Boulder, Colorado; Tom and Enid Schantz, The Rue Morgue, Boulder, Colorado; Hank and Bridget Massie of Berkeley, California, for the use of their Doll House; and my parents, Don and Thelma Dawson.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  California Penal Code § 646.9 as amended by Stats. 1994, c. 931, § 1:

  (a) Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person and who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family, is guilty of the crime of stalking...

  (e) For the purposes of this section, “credible threat” means a verbal or written threat or a threat implied by a pattern of conduct or a combination of verbal or written statements and conduct made with the intent and the apparent ability to carry out the threat so as to cause the person who is the target of the threat to reasonably fear for his or her safety or the safety of his or her immediate family...

  One

  “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE LEMON TREE?”

  The woman stood in the uncarpeted foyer of the house on Garber Street, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.

  I glanced at Vicki Vernon, pacing like a restless tiger cat back and forth across the worn red and black Turkish kelim. Now she stopped, widening those golden-brown eyes that reminded me of her father.

  “Sasha,” Vicki said, addressing the newcomer.

  Sasha, still scowling, moved toward us. Tall and dark, with short, curly black hair that set off the big gold hoops in her earlobes, she wore loose-fitting blue jeans, a purple turtleneck visible over the collar of her denim jacket. She carried a red nylon backpack slung over her left shoulder. Behind her I saw a little boy, about six, wearing baggy brown cords and a yellow sweater, a bright orange child-sized pack on his back. He stared at me with wide brown eyes, one hand cradling the ripped stem and torn petals of a pink tulip.

  Sasha ignored me and fired words at Vicki. “What the hell happened to the lemon tree? And the rest of those plants? There’s dirt and leaves and flowers all over the porch and the sidewalk.”

  “Vandalism,” I said. “We think.”

  Both of them turned to look at me. I’d been sitting at one end of the high-backed persimmon-colored sofa that faced the front windows, its bright upholstery clashing with the dark red of the carpet. Now I stood up. Vicki made the introductions.

  “Jeri, this is Sasha Nichols, our landlady. Sasha, this is my... this is Jeri Howard. I told you about her.”

  “The private investigator who used to be married to your father.” Sasha slipped the backpack from her shoulder and set it down next to the sofa. “Since when do you call a private eye to report vandalism?”

  “Vicki tells me it may not be as simple as that.”

  Sasha frowned. The fading light of the March afternoon cast her strong features in relief. “Maybe not.” She turned and looked at the child behind her, then patted the youngster on his shoulder. “You can play in the backyard until dinner, Martin. Then we have to do our homework.”

  The little boy, still holding the ruined tulip, opened the door on the opposite side of the hallway. I knew from what Vicki had told me that it led to her landlady’s quarters, occupying nearly half the house’s lower floor. The room where we were standing had been the formal dining room. It was now the living room, which, along with the large kitchen visible through an open doorway at the rear, was shared by all the residents.

  Somehow, when Vicki described her living arrangements, I’d assumed her landlady was older. A professor’s widow perhaps, forced by financial circumstances to turn her home into a rooming house. However, Sasha Nichols was in her early thirties at most.

  The house was a rambling two-story structure, a brown shingle, one of many similar houses in Berkeley’s Elmwood district. Many of these houses had been built in the early part of this century and were prized for their comfort and space. If it were for sale, the down payment on this house would be more than I made in a year. I could only guess at the yearly property taxes and the cost of heat, light, and water.

  I was sure my theory about the landlady’s tight money was correct. The place was in need of maintenance. Outside I’d noticed the usual things a homeowner has to deal with on a regular basis—the roof, the rain gutters, the exterior shingles that covered the sides of the house.
All of these showed signs of neglect, and I’d seen a cracked windowpane downstairs, in Sasha’s quarters. Inside there were hairline cracks on the high ceiling. It looked like the walls needed repainting. Patches of wear on the Turkish carpet and the sofa and chairs grouped around the coffee table gave evidence of years of use.

  “Anyone going to tell me what happened?” Sasha lowered her voice, already an alto purr, and looked sharply at Vicki.

  “Emily and I found the plants when we got home from class,” Vicki said. “Emily was really upset.”

  As if on cue, footsteps sounded behind us as another person crossed the threshold from kitchen to living room. Emily Austen, one of Vicki’s housemates, carried a round brass tray with three mugs of coffee, a sugar bowl, and a small pitcher. She stopped when she saw her landlady. “Sasha, I didn’t hear you come in. I’ll get another mug.”

  She set the tray on the coffee table and quickly headed back to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a fourth mug. She gave it to Sasha, then sat down on the sofa and picked up her coffee. Vicki perched next to her.

  I resumed my seat and reached for one of the steaming mugs. I took a sip and felt a caffeine jolt surge through me as I examined Emily. If Vicki was a vigorous tiger cat, always in motion, Emily was a quiet brown wren, one who never had much to say. Her dark brown hair fell in waves past her shoulders, caught on either side of her temples with matching blue barrettes. She didn’t look upset now. I saw a touch of wariness in the blue eyes that looked out from her pale face. Was she wary of me, or of strangers in general? She seemed very much in Vicki’s shadow, but something made me think that first impression was erroneous.

  Mug in hand, Sasha arranged herself tiredly on the cushions of a wing-back chair and put her feet up on the coffee table.

  “It’s a lovely house,” I said. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Most of my life.” Sasha sipped her coffee. Now that she was closer to me, I could see lines of fatigue in her dark face. “The house belonged to my parents. My father was a professor at the university. I’m what they call a faculty brat.” She looked expectantly at her two tenants. “Let’s talk about the plants.”

  It was the sight of the lemon tree that had upset Emily, according to Vicki. The tree’s fate would bother anyone who’d seen the deceased. It pricked at my mind too. But I couldn’t recall why. Citrus trees were common enough in the Northern California landscape. In fact, there was one in the courtyard of my apartment complex, near my front porch. I pictured the little tree with its dark, waxy green leaves. We’d had an early spring following a cold rainy winter, and the tree was now loaded with fragrant yellow-white blossoms, harbingers of the hard fruit that would soon appear and ripen from green to yellow.

  But the lemon tree Vicki and her housemates had planted would never bear fruit. I’d seen what remained of it when I arrived, fifteen minutes before Sasha. The little tree, about three feet tall, and the other foliage, had been planted in several large clay pots that had then been arranged on both sides of the steps leading up to the porch. When Vicki and Emily returned from classes at U.C. Berkeley earlier that afternoon, they found the plants destroyed, their carcasses littering the sidewalk and porch, a testament of desecration that cast a pall over what had been a pleasantly mild and sunny Friday in March.

  I’d had to sidestep potting soil, broken bits of clay, and the smashed remains on my way up the steps. Two azaleas and two hydrangeas had been ripped from their containers and shredded into debris. The pots were smashed against the porch railing. Tulips and daffodils, both bulbs and blooms, had been stomped to a messy pulp under someone’s feet.

  Pulled from its pot, the lemon tree had been decapitated, its trunk chopped with an ax or a hedge cutter. The dark green top, with its tiny buds, was arranged on the wooden porch, the chopped-off end pointing toward the front door. The lower half sat alone in the middle of the front porch, resting lopsidedly on roots that bled potting soil.

  At first, compared to the other plants, the lemon tree looked relatively unscathed. But on further examination I decided that it had been singled out. Tossed, like a gauntlet.

  The destruction could have been committed by some random vandal who’d seen the plants as an easy target. Berkeley certainly had its share of crime, no more immune to the underbelly of modern life than its neighbor, Oakland. But I didn’t think so. The mess littering the front of the house looked more like a calling card than an impulse.

  Who was leaving the message? And why?

  As Vicki told Sasha about discovering the plants, I watched Emily’s face. She looked troubled. I recalled what Vicki had said earlier, while Emily was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. She’d described her housemate as an undemonstrative person. But when Emily saw the plants, Vicki said, she got a strange look on her face. Then she clammed up. She still wasn’t saying anything. Her blue eyes moved from Vicki to Sasha, as though she were watching a tennis match.

  I watched Vicki’s face as she talked, thinking how much she looked like Sid. In another lifetime she’d been my stepdaughter. But I never had been able to think of Vicki in those terms, at least not seriously. There were barely fifteen years between us, so during my brief marriage to Sid Vernon, Vicki and I had been friends rather than step-anything. We were still friends. I suppose that’s why she’d asked me to come here.

  “So why bring Jeri into all of this?” Sasha sounded amused as she shot me a sidelong glance. “Why didn’t you just call the cops?”

  “Vicki tells me there have been other incidents.”

  “Well, yes,” Sasha said, somewhat reluctantly.

  I looked at Vicki again. “Have you mentioned any of this to your father?”

  “Are you kidding?” Vicki gave me a knowing glance. “He’d go ballistic.”

  I had to admit she was right. I pictured Sid’s reaction to the possibility that someone, anyone, might even think of bothering his only child. Not a pretty sight. Sid Vernon is a detective sergeant in the Homicide Section at the Oakland Police Department. On a day-to-day basis he deals with the mean streets of Oakland and the ugliness that human beings perpetrate on one another. That would make any father protective of his daughter, particularly if she’s barely nineteen years old and on her own for the first time.

  It’s hard to be alone when you attend the University of California at Berkeley, with more than twenty thousand students swelling the city’s population while school is in session. Vicki wasn’t a loner either. Gregarious, capable, up to her eyeballs in any number of activities, usually taking the lead, that’s how I’d describe her.

  But take it from me. The streets of Berkeley can be just as mean as those in Oakland. Murder and violence have visited the U.C. campus on several occasions.

  Vicki may have been on her own for the first time, but she was hardly alone. She lived in this house with seven other people, counting Sasha’s little boy. She’d met Emily last August, when both of them, brand-new freshmen, moved into this house. There weren’t enough residence halls available for Cal undergraduates, so students found off-campus accommodations. Vicki herself had visited Berkeley in May, before starting her summer job, just to find a place to live. She and Emily had quickly become good friends.

  Vicki said she liked the house and her housemates. Besides, the neighborhood’s proximity to the campus made it popular with faculty and an ideal location for students, who could walk the few blocks north on College Avenue to the campus.

  Vicki shifted on the sofa, seeming to be in motion even though she was sitting down. “What do you think, Jeri? Am I overreacting?”

  I looked at Emily, thinking that her dark blue eyes reminded me of water, a mountain lake reluctant to give up any secrets. “Vicki says the lemon tree bothered you. Why?”

  “It’s just that we worked so hard,” Emily said finally, setting her mug on the coffee table. “To clean up the front yard and make things look nice. We all pitched in time. And money.” She glanced at Vicki. “We went over to the nursery
in a group to pick out the plants. For someone to destroy them like that, it’s so cruel.”

  “Do you have any theories, Emily? About who might have trashed the plants?”

  Emily looked as though she were about to say something, then she kept it back. She shook her head slowly, deliberately, then reached for her coffee mug and raised it to her lips instead.

  Sasha sighed and took another hit of coffee before setting her mug on the table. “Well, I’m going to call the cops. I assume that’s the recommended course of action. Right, Jeri?”

  I nodded. “Before it’s dark, so they can take pictures. But they’ll probably treat it as a one-time vandalism incident.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We can talk about the other stuff while we’re waiting for the cops to show up.”

  She got up from the chair and went back to the kitchen. I saw her in the open doorway, with the cordless phone held to one ear, as she gave the Berkeley police dispatcher her address on Garber Street. “That’s right. A block above College. On the right, a two-story brown shingle, with a red and yellow kite tied to the porch.” Sasha replaced the phone in its cradle and rejoined us. “They’re on their way.”

  I heard a key twisting in the front door lock. The four of us turned to look as a tall young man, all legs and elbows, came clattering into the foyer, bearing a plastic carry sack covered with Chinese characters, its contents exuding a spicy aroma. He stopped and glared at us.

  “God damn it, who killed my tulips?”

  Two

  “TELL ME ABOUT THE ANONYMOUS PHONE CALLS.”

  I looked around, but none of the housemates appeared eager to respond to my comment, let alone confirm it.

  We were in the kitchen, a big rectangular room that sprawled across the back of the house. Right now it was the hub of activity, warmth contained within its pale yellow walls and high ceiling. As I watched the room’s occupants, I thought of planes landing at a crowded airstrip.

  Emily, who appeared to be a serious caffeine junkie, was making another pot of coffee, spooning grounds from a bag of Peet’s into the basket of a drip coffee maker. Sasha and two women who had been introduced to me as Rachel Steiner and Marisol Gallegos stood at various points along the yellow and white tiled counter, hands busy with varying phases of meal preparation. Emily sidestepped first one, then another of her housemates as she put the bag of coffee back into the refrigerator and filled the carafe with water.