A Credible Threat Page 16

  “I haven’t heard from her in years,” she said. “After everything that happened, she took Missy and left the Bay Area. I don’t know if she’s still in California. She liked to travel, so for all I know she’s moving from place to place. Now and then I get a postcard from some exotic place.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her. Something in the way she spoke made me think she was holding back.

  “I need to find her. Richard Bradfield’s out of prison.”

  The shop owner grimaced as though she’d taken a bite of something sour. “They should have kept him locked up forever. I honestly don’t know where Cordelia is. If I did, I’m not sure I’d tell you.”

  “I understand. But if you do hear from her, or from someone who might know, relay a message. Tell her to get in touch with me.”

  I went back outside and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, oblivious to the pedestrians and vehicles going by me on Throckmorton. If Cordelia Ramsey had spent the last few years traveling, that might explain why she hadn’t protested Richard Bradfield’s parole, as she had the right to do. On the other hand, Melissa would be in school, which seemed to indicate that Cordelia needed to stay put. Unless the girl was in boarding school. No, she would be nineteen or twenty now, probably starting college about the time her father was eligible for parole. So Cordelia could very well have been traveling and unavailable to comment at Bradfield’s hearing.

  No doubt Cordelia had covered her tracks very well. And the people she’d known here in Mill Valley would be reluctant to assist me, if the shop owner was any indication. I might need some help on this one. I retrieved my car from its parking space, pulled out my address book and cellular phone, then punched in a number. Busy. I hoped that meant the person I was calling was in her San Rafael office.

  I met Rita Lydecker several years ago at the midwinter conference of the National Association of Legal Investigators. I liked her immediately. Whoever coined the phrase tough old broad had to be talking about Rita. She was a brassy barrel-shaped bottle blonde in her late fifties who’d worked as a prison guard and a bail bondsman before hanging out her shingle as a skip tracer and investigator. Her grandkids thought it was a hoot that Grandma was a private eye.

  Rita had a second-floor office on D Street near downtown San Rafael. I was right about that busy signal. She was still on the phone, polluting the air with a cigarette and waving her hands as she talked. When I walked in a wide grin spread over her face and she waved me to a chair. I opted instead for the open French doors that led out onto a small deck that she’d decorated with potted plants and a couple of refinished park benches set at angles.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she crowed when she got off the phone. “How the hell are you?” She ground out the cigarette in an ashtray and got up to join me in the doorway, resplendent in form-fitting black stretch pants, a bright red silk shirt, and a lot of chunky gold jewelry. She swept me into an embrace perfumed with smoke and jasmine cologne. “What brings you over to my side of the bay?”

  “Business. I need to find someone.”

  “So tell me.” Rita draped herself comfortably on one of the benches and beckoned me to the other.

  “Cordelia Ramsey. Remember her?”

  “Yeah.” Rita ran one beringed hand through her platinum-blond hair and crossed one still-shapely leg over the other. “The redhead with the scum-sucking toad brother-in-law who offed her sister. You and Errol did a good piece of work on that one.”

  “Not good enough. He’s out of prison. And I have a feeling he hasn’t been rehabilitated.”

  “Guys like that never are,” Rita said frankly. “The whole world would be better off if somebody just shot the sumbitches.” She shook her head. “I got a case over in San Anselmo. Guy just like that. I’m afraid he’s gonna kill his ex-wife, and the kids too.”

  Rita made shocked noises as I told her about the case. “What a hornet’s nest. The bombing points at this Macauley kid. But the lemon tree—that’s got to be Bradfield.”

  “I need to find Cordelia Ramsey. She could be in danger. I wondered if you could give me some help.”

  “Glad to,” Rita said, getting to her feet. “Let’s go over to the courthouse. It’s nearly four. That only gives us an hour.”

  She locked her office and wheeled her Caddy over to the Frank Lloyd Wright edifice that was the Marin County Courthouse. There, we both combed through records, looking for some sort of paper trail that would tell us where Cordelia Ramsey had gone.

  Cordelia would be fifty-three now. She was a San Francisco native who’d studied art in France and Italy. Ramsey was her birth name. She’d kept it through three marriages. The first was a brief one, lasting less than a year, to a fellow art student named Charles Wegman who, according to Cordelia, was lost to antiquity—and just as well. Her second husband lasted longer. He was an architect named Michael Paxton, who had his own firm in Mill Valley, not far from Cordelia’s gallery. Paxton had died suddenly, a couple of years before his wife’s sister was murdered.

  Cordelia had then married the artist, Colin Derrill, someone she’d discovered when she bought one of his paintings. He was quite a bit younger than she was, a head-in-the-clouds type. At the time, I wondered if Cordelia had married him on the rebound from her grief at the loss of her second husband. Beyond the obvious connection of art, they didn’t seem suited to one another. She and Derrill had lived in her Mill Valley home for most of their three-year marriage and had separated shortly after Bradfield’s stalking trial had ended. I didn’t know where Derrill was now, only that I saw his name now and then in the newspapers. I guessed he was still somewhere in the Bay Area. I had some contacts in the local art scene. I was sure I could locate him.

  At five the courthouse closed and we were chased out. Rather than face Friday evening traffic, I had dinner with Rita at a Thai restaurant, talking out some ideas. When I got home, the lemon tree’s stump chilled me, as did the emptiness of my apartment. I missed the cats.

  But if Richard Bradfield knew where I lived, I wouldn’t risk having them there.

  Twenty-six

  THERE’S A BLACK-WREATHED MEMORIAL ON A barren median strip at the corner of Thirty-second Street and Mandela Parkway. The parkway used to be Cypress Street. It slices through West Oakland, following the route of the old Cypress Freeway that collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing more than forty people. I’ve never stopped to look at the black wreath, but I know it’s there to commemorate the life and death of one of those victims.

  I turned right on Thirty-second and drove the few blocks to Peralta. This was where, according to a friend of mine who was plugged into the Bay Area art scene, Colin Derrill had a studio. The building, near the Poplar Recreation Center, looked like a warehouse. No doubt it had been in a previous life. Today was Saturday, and all the real warehouses were closed. Except this one, now used as studios by several artists.

  I parked next to the loading dock and walked inside, past a woodworking shop, hearing the earsplitting whine of a saw. Next to this door I saw a sign that told me C. Derrill was in unit 5A. I located 5A but the door was closed and padlocked. Now the saw’s whine stopped and I heard music, some instrumental jazz piano. I doubled back to the woodworking shop and stepped inside.

  The source of the music was a portable CD player set precariously on a sawhorse. Next to this, a curvaceous brunette in brown leggings and a green T-shirt tinkered with the saw. The smell of freshly cut lumber pervaded the space.

  She looked up and gave me the once-over with a pair of sharp brown eyes. “Help you?”

  “I’m looking for Colin Derrill.”

  “He’s running some errands. I expect him back soon.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  I waited near the open doorway of the warehouse, watching a couple of kids ride their bikes up and down the nearly deserted street. Derrill showed up about twenty minutes later. He looked much the same as he had when he was still married to Cordelia Ramsey. He was in his early forties now, tall
and loose-limbed, and his curly hair was an ashy brown that didn’t show the gray. His hairline, however, had receded a bit farther.

  When he saw me in the doorway he flashed a polite smile and his hazel eyes narrowed. He looked a bit confused. He knew he’d seen me before. But at the moment he couldn’t quite place me.

  “Jeri Howard,” I told him. “I used to work with Errol Seville.”

  His smile dimmed. “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that. May we talk?”

  He was carrying a white sack that smelled like Mexican food. He delivered part of the contents to the woman in the woodworking shop. Then he unlocked the door to his studio and I followed him into his work space.

  “Please, don’t let me keep you from your lunch,” I said.

  “Thanks.” Derrill unwrapped his burrito and demolished it while I circled the room, looking at his canvases. He was into big, abstract, and lots of red. I didn’t know much about art, but I knew what I liked. And I didn’t like what he was painting. When I was in Paris a couple of years ago I spent days staring at every Monet I could find. But a Derrill canvas made me want to blink. Often.

  I stood next to a canvas that towered above me and hurt my eyes. Then I turned back to where Derrill was wiping his hands on a napkin. “Have you been in this neighborhood long?”

  “No. And I’m not sure I’ll stay. I was over in San Francisco, south of Market, but the rents were going up. The rent’s cheap here, but we’ve had a couple of attempted break-ins since I moved in. What can I do for you, Ms. Howard?”

  “Have you talked with Cordelia recently?”

  Derrill frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “I need to find her. Do you know where she is?”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead he crumpled the wrappings that had held his burrito, balling them up and stuffing them into the white sack.

  “Do you?”

  “I know how it looked,” Derrill said, regret tingeing his voice and spilling over into his hazel eyes. “Me bailing out on her right after the trial. But the marriage was over long before that. We only stayed together to present a united front, so to speak.”

  “I understand,” I said, and maybe I did. “But do you still have any contact with Cordelia? It’s important. If you know where she is, please have her call me as soon as possible.”

  That’s all I told him. I didn’t think he needed to hear about Bradfield at this point. I took one of my business cards from my purse and handed it to him.

  A frown furrowed little wrinkles in his face. “She went away and started a new life. I do see her now and then, but we haven’t talked since... well, I guess it was right before Christmas. We had dinner. She came down to meet her niece. They were going away for the holidays.”

  “Her niece is going to school at Cal.” Even as I said it his face closed up, as though he’d revealed too much. The penny dropped.

  On Garber Street, Sasha was playing catch on the front lawn with Martin, who waved at me and smiled as though he’d accepted me as part of the gang. It was a sunny afternoon, and all up and down the block I could see people out in their yards and driveways, digging in the dirt or washing it off their cars.

  “Martin looks like he’s recuperating,” I said, glancing at the little boy as he ran across the lawn and scooped up the big yellow ball his mother had just tossed his way.

  “Seems to be. He’s had a couple of nightmares, though. What’s up?”

  “Who’s home?” I asked.

  “Well,” she began, then dodged as the yellow ball whizzed past her. “No fair. You wait until I finish talking with Jeri. Ben and Nelson are having a serious study session at the library. Vicki went to visit her dad. Rachel went on a hike at Point Reyes. Emily and Marisol are in the kitchen, baking a cake. Today is Rachel’s birthday. We’re going to surprise her when she gets home.”

  “Carrot cake,” Martin advised me. “I get to lick the beaters when they make the cream cheese frosting.”

  “That sounds great,” I told him, ruffling his curly black hair. As they resumed their ball game, I went in the open front door, through the living room that still looked like ground zero. In the kitchen Marisol stood at the sink, whirling sudsy water around in a large mixing bowl.

  “Where’s Emily?” I asked.

  “On the deck,” Marisol said, pointing over her shoulder with one soapy hand.

  The back door was open. Through the screen door I saw Emily, standing at the picnic table in the middle of the redwood deck that extended almost to the back fence of Sasha’s property, where a pine tree shaded the back corner of the yard. I opened the screen door and went outside.

  Emily gave no indication that she’d seen me. She seemed intent on her task, filling three bird feeders of varying sizes arrayed on the table in front of her. She had a plastic cup in her hand, using it to scoop seed from a large bag into the feeders. I watched her as she filled the two smaller ones, then I walked toward her, stopping on the opposite side of the table.

  “Hi, Jeri,” she said, smiling as she reached for the third feeder, a tall metal and plastic tube, and unscrewed the lid.

  I placed my hands palm down on the rough wooden surface of the table.

  “Hello, Melissa.”

  Twenty-seven

  EMILY AUSTEN—OR PERHAPS I SHOULD SAY, Melissa Bradfield—stood motionless, staring at me with those deep blue eyes.

  Then she set aside the tall bird feeder and the plastic cup she’d been using to scoop seed from the bag. With her right hand she picked up a stray sunflower seed and turned it over and over with her fingers.

  “When did you figure it out?” She lowered her eyes, looking at the table as though she were a schoolgirl who had been sent to the principal’s office.

  “Not as soon as I should have,” I said. “The first night I was here, when I made the joke about Emily Austen being a good name for an English major. The look on your face told me you didn’t think it was funny. I should have realized that Emily Austen was a made-up name. When Martin disappeared, you were so frantic. It wasn’t his being gone that triggered your reaction. I wondered then if it was something in your past, someone who threatened you.”

  I shook my head. “But I was concentrating on Vicki being the target, not you. And the possibility that someone the others knew was responsible for these incidents. I had plenty of suspects. But you knew, as soon as you saw that lemon tree out on the front porch. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I didn’t know. Not right away.” Emily dropped the sunflower seed into the still-open bag, then turned and walked to the end of the deck. She knelt and picked up a cone that had fallen from the Monterey pine in the corner of the yard onto the redwood planks. Then she stood, leaning on the railing.

  “The phone calls... That could have been anyone. I honestly thought it was that awful Ted Macauley. It didn’t occur to me that it could be—”

  She stopped. From the look on her face it was evident she could not bring herself to call Richard Bradfield her father.

  “When I saw the lemon tree I remembered the one he left on my aunt’s front porch. Still, I didn’t make the connection. I guess it really didn’t dawn on me until Martin disappeared.” She sighed, a deep soul-rattling sound, and her fingers plucked at the pinecone, pulling at its seeds. “I guess that’s denial. I simply couldn’t believe he was out of prison so soon. That he’d be able to do what he threatened.”

  I joined her at the railing. “What did he threaten?”

  Emily looked past me at the house, not really seeing it. “He said he’d come back and kill my aunt and take me away. I believed him. So did my aunt. After all, he killed my mother.”

  “Very likely,” I said. “Even though it was never proved.”

  “I know he killed her.” Emily turned her head toward me. At that moment her eyes burned with a blue fire, disconcertingly like her father’s eyes. “I asked her, was it him? She told me he did it.”

  “In words?” I recalled the tape of that 911 call,
gauging the admissibility of hearsay evidence and deathbed statements. I hadn’t heard Melissa’s question or her mother’s answer, but perhaps the girl hadn’t spoken into the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “No.” Emily’s voice was a jagged whisper. “If she’d said his name, maybe the police could have done something. They could have used that tape against him. But her words were all slurred and jumbly. When I asked her, she nodded, right before she died. I know she nodded.”

  Emily’s right hand came down hard on the railing, loosening the seeds that studded the pinecone. She pulled at one of them and it came out in her fingers. She tossed it away.

  “It wasn’t just some random movement of her head. And I wasn’t just some hysterical kid.” Her voice was angry now, as she recalled the events of eight years before. Her fingers moving faster as she pulled seeds away from the cone. “I lived in that house. I know how he treated her. I saw him hit her. And I know the policemen believed me, that older guy Joe, and Vicki’s dad.”

  She stopped and shook her head. “But that wasn’t enough, especially since his assistant lied and said he was in Pebble Beach. After the funeral he took me back to that house where he killed my mother. He acted as though we’d just go on, the two of us. Pretending like nothing happened.”

  Her eyes were wintry now. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, the little girl who’d found her mother bleeding to death, to be in the custody of the man she, and many other people, believed responsible for her mother’s murder.

  “I ran away once,” she said, her voice quiet now. “I was trying to get over to Marin, to be with my aunt. But I didn’t get very far. You can’t get very far when you’re only eleven years old. He found me. He told me if I ever ran away, he’d put me in some private boarding school. That would have been preferable to living with him. But it would have taken me out of my aunt’s reach.”