A Credible Threat (The Jeri Howard Series Book 6) Read online

  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.

  Vicki and I stayed out of the way. We were seated near the back window, at a long oval table with eight matching chairs. This dining room set crowded the kitchen, too large for the space. It was a lovely old piece that looked as though it had seen some hard use, its dark walnut surface dull and scarred between the blue and yellow woven place mats.

  At one end of the table, his chair close to the back door, Nelson Lathrop ate his kung pao chicken straight from the take-out container, chopsticks moving methodically to his mouth. Now and then he paused to guzzle soda from a can.

  When I’d seen him standing up, expressing indignation about the tulips, I’d guessed he was an inch or two over six feet, with a mobile clown’s face and a gangly, bony frame clad in the ubiquitous blue jeans and a green and brown sweater with knit pills all over it. It looked as though he’d had that sweater for years or picked it up in a thrift shop. His hair was brown and untidy, scraggling down to his shoulders. He appeared to comb it with his fingers, as he did now, shoving a couple of strands behind his ears. He poked the chopsticks into the container in search of another morsel. Then he glanced to his left with sly twinkly blue eyes and grinned, raising his thin brown eyebrows several times in some sort of greeting.

  I turned my head. Through the window at my back I glimpsed Sasha’s little boy, Martin. He was on the wooden deck at the back of the house, peering through the window at the grown-ups and wriggling his own eyebrows at Nelson. Then he saw me watching him. His face became wary, as if to say, I don’t know you. The boy turned from the window and went down the steps into the backyard, its vegetation dim and leafy in the twilight.

  Emily retreated to the end of the table opposite Nelson, where she’d stacked her books on returning from class. The book on the top was a trade paperback of Sense and Sensibility. Judging from it and the other books on the stack, I guessed at Emily’s field of study.

  “Emily Austen. Good name for an English major,” I said.

  Everyone laughed at my friendly jest. Except Emily. Maybe she’d heard the joke once too often. Or perhaps there was another reason for the guarded flash in her blue eyes.

  “The anonymous phone calls,” I said. “Tell me more than you told the officer.”

  “What’s to tell? The caller hasn’t said anything.”

  Sasha had been chopping vegetables on a big wooden cutting board. Now she set aside the knife and used both hands to scoop the vegetables into a cast-iron skillet that rested on one of the front burners of the stove. She opened the cabinet next to the stove and took out several spice jars, shaking a dash of this and that over the skillet, then pulled a wooden spoon from a chipped crock on the counter and gave the mixture a stir.

  Rachel and Marisol had arrived home within minutes of one another, while the Berkeley police officer was surveying the damage. As I had predicted, the officer treated the destruction of the plants as a routine vandalism call, taking a report and a couple of photographs. When Sasha, almost reluctantly, mentioned the phone calls the residents had been getting, he promised to contact the phone company and have a tap put on the line, to see if the anonymous caller’s location could be determined.

  The residents of the house seemed chary about talking with the officer, all except Vicki, the daughter of a cop. Sasha was right. There wasn’t much the housemates could tell the Berkeley cop. None of them had been there when the plants were destroyed. Nelson didn’t seem to have a clue about who’d stomped his tulips, and once he’d gotten over his initial outrage, his focus shifted rapidly to dinner.

  But the reactions of the other housemates made me curious. Sasha and Emily both seemed guarded, as though they had suspicions of their own about the vandal. Rachel, a tall blonde in a Guatemalan blouse and dangling beaded earrings that caught in the loose strands of her braided hair, mourned the demise of the azaleas she had picked out, wondering aloud what kind of low-life scumbag had done such a thing. But she’d been subdued when the officer questioned her.

  Marisol’s reaction had been to the presence of the cop, as though the very sight of a uniform triggered unpleasant memories. Her mouth thinned, her dark brown eyes narrowed, and she was barely civil when responding to his queries. She acted as though he, not the vandal, was the lowlife scumbag. It made me wonder what reason she had to dislike cops.

  Marisol was a good foot shorter man Rachel. Her long black hair was wound into a knot at the nape of her neck, wound as tight as Marisol herself. Right now she seemed full of contained energy in gray slacks and a red sweater as she and Rachel bumped elbows between the refrigerator and the microwave oven that rested on the counter next to it. The kitchen cabinets in this old house were high on the walls, and Marisol couldn’t reach past the second shelf. Instead of asking Rachel for help, she grabbed a sturdy-looking wooden step stool resting to one side of the refrigerator, flipped it open, and climbed up, resting one knee on the counter as her hands probed the third shelf and drew out a jar. That done, she clambered down and replaced the stool, then twisted her mouth as she twisted the lid off the jar.

  The microwave oven beeped and Rachel stepped up to open its door. Her dinner appeared to be reheated pasta, tiny shells decorated with a splash of bright red sauce from a jar in the refrigerator and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese from the same source. Now she set the shallow bowl she held on a place mat, fetched a spoon from a nearby drawer and a paper napkin from a container in the middle of the table.

  “First I’ve heard of phone calls,” Nelson declared. “Nobody ever said anything to me about it.”

  “The reason you haven’t gotten any phone calls is because you have your own phone,” Rachel said.

  “Nelson and Ben live in the garage apartment.” Sasha waved the wooden spoon vaguely in the direction of the backyard, now barely visible through the windows as afternoon gave way to evening.

  “We’re segregated from the female population of the house,” Nelson told me with a wicked grin. “Which suits certain members of the female population of the house.”

  He shot a pointed look at the smallest of the three women at the counter. She glared back at him. Marisol evidently didn’t think much of Nelson. He glanced at me and combed his untidy brown hair off his forehead. “Two rooms, a tiny bath, an even tinier kitchenette. I’m just as happy not to share a bath with all these women. Believe me, I have sisters. I know. But I take my meals here in the bosom of the household. I enjoy the camaraderie.”

  “Where is Ben?” I asked.

  “He works nights,” Rachel told me. “Waiting tables at a restaurant downtown.”

  Nelson finished his Chinese takeout. He turned in his chair and tossed the container and the chopsticks into the trash. Then he angled the chair so he had a better view of the kitchen and its occupants.

  “So how come I didn’t get any phone calls?” he said, leaning back, soda can in his hand.

  “Because you’re a man,” Marisol said, her words sharp as she took her turn at the microwave, sliding a plate inside, then shutting the door. She punched buttons and the oven began its cycle. While her dinner cooked she stared across the kitchen at Nelson, a challenge in her dark brown eyes.

  “Yeah, sure.” Nelson rolled his blue eyes upward as he finished his soda. He got up from the chair. In a few long strides he crossed the faded linoleum floor to the sink, where he pointedly ignored Marisol and rinsed the can. With an underhanded throw, he tossed it into one of the cardboard recycling bins sitting next to the trash can. Then he resumed his place at the table, stretching his long legs out in f
ront of him.

  “I resent the implication,” he said, “that I might have had something to do with whatever is going on, simply because I’m male.”

  Marisol made a derisive little noise, then the microwave beeped. She opened the door and took out her plate, which held what looked like rice and leftover stew. After grabbing a spoon from a drawer, she carried the plate to the other end of the table, sat down, and began eating.

  “The phone calls?” I prompted, feeling a bit exasperated at all this byplay that, so far, hadn’t told me anything.

  “We need to talk about this before Martin comes in,” Sasha said, turning down the gas burner under her skillet. She gave the contents another stir, then set the spoon aside. Then she leaned back against the counter and stared at me with solemn brown eyes.

  “I’m not sure when the phone calls started. I think it was about the same time as that hate mail incident at Boalt.”

  As Sasha spoke I nodded slowly, recalling what I’d read in the newspapers. Earlier that year an anonymous—aren’t they always?—flyer replete with racial epithets had circulated at Boalt Hall, the University of California law school, fuel to the current political fire raging in California, a sometimes uncivilized debate about affirmative action and whether it benefited women and minorities to the detriment of white males. There had been a demonstration in support of affirmative action at Sproul Plaza, site of so many other protests in the sixties.

  “I’m the president of the African American Law Students organization,” Sasha continued. “I’m visible. And outspoken. I had a hand in organizing several protest demonstrations. And I’ve had run-ins with some of the anti-affirmative action crowd. So I thought the phone calls were directed at me.”

  “Heavy breathing and hang-ups?” I asked.

  Sasha’s mouth tightened. “Nobody called me names, if that’s what you mean.”

  I’d wondered whether the racial epithets on the flyer had been whispered into a phone receiver. Evidently not. At least not yet. Sasha forestalled my next question.

  “After a couple of weeks I had the phone number changed. The calls stopped for a week or two, then they started again. I don’t know how. I’m careful about giving out my phone number. So are all the residents.”

  “I don’t give the number to anybody,” Marisol chimed in, as Rachel nodded in agreement.

  “As a private investigator,” I said, “I can tell you it’s very easy to obtain someone’s number. All it takes is persistence and luck. What about that cracked pane I saw in the front window? How did that happen? And when?”

  “That?” Sasha looked at me as though she hadn’t considered that the cracked window could be connected with the nuisance calls. “I came home from class, a week or so ago, and found it like that. I assumed it was one of the neighborhood kids, but when I asked around, none of them would cop to it. I need to replace it, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.” She frowned. “You’d think if someone was going to toss a rock at my window for a reason, they’d wrap a note around it.”

  “It could be nothing but an accident,” I said. “I doubt the neighborhood kids would cop to it if they had broken the window.”

  Next to me Vicki was shaking her head. “The phone calls started earlier, Sasha. Right after New Year’s, I think. So it couldn’t have been the hate mail thing. That was in the middle of January. There’s this guy, Jeri. He kept asking me for a date. Emily too. He called here a couple of times. I don’t know how he got the number. I certainly didn’t give it to him. Anyway, I really didn’t want to go out with him and he refused to take no for an answer.” She looked at Emily, as if prompting her to say something.

  “I didn’t want to go out with him either. He came on awfully strong.” The coffee was ready by now. Emily got up from the table to pour herself another cup. “More coffee, Jeri?”

  “Yes, thanks.” While she filled my mug I digested what Vicki had said about the guy who wanted to go out with her. Last December I’d worked on a case with some disturbing similarities, involving a young woman who wound up dead because of someone who wanted to control her life. These days the suitor who wouldn’t take no for an answer could be more dangerous than benign.

  “This guy was upset because neither of you would go out with him?”

  My question was directed at both of them. Emily didn’t respond as she replaced the coffee carafe on its warmer, but Vicki answered with a shrug. “He called us dykes,” she said.

  “Typical,” Marisol growled, banging her spoon against her plate as she ate. “You won’t date the creep so you must be lesbians.”

  Unfortunately, I knew the term was thrown around quite frequently. I’d been on the receiving end myself, simply because I was walking through a San Francisco BART station with a female friend.

  “Emily, is there anything else that’s happened recently to make you think someone might be directing these phone calls at you?” Once again I saw that distant look in her blue eyes and felt as though she were keeping something back.

  “I’m not sure, Jeri. I’ll have to think about it.”

  Now I looked at Marisol and Rachel. “What about the two of you? Any reason to think the calls are aimed at you?”

  Rachel poked at her pasta with her spoon before she answered. “I do escort duty at a local abortion clinic. I have encountered some truly frightening people. They’ve certainly targeted the doctors and other clinic employees, finding out where they live, passing out flyers in their neighborhoods. So I suppose getting my phone number isn’t out of the question. But none of the other people I escort with have gotten any calls. And these anti-abortion protesters are usually right up front about calling us baby killers, right there at the clinic. They certainly wouldn’t hesitate to spew venom over the phone. Whoever’s making these calls doesn’t talk. That’s why the calls are so disconcerting.”

  I agreed. If the phone caller had said anything, he or she might be more readily identified by the content of that speech. But to say nothing increased the menace. Not only was the caller anonymous, so was the target.

  Rachel looked at Marisol, passing a figurative baton. One that Marisol didn’t appear to want. She’d finished her dinner by now and she got up from the table and carried her plate and spoon to the sink, where she rinsed them and put them into the dishwasher.

  “Come on, Marisol,” Sasha said wearily. “Don’t be so tight-assed.”

  “I am not being tight-assed.” Marisol whirled and stared furiously at her housemates. “Confidentiality is very important in what I do.”

  “Obdurate, then,” Rachel said. “Give Jeri a break. She’s here to help.”

  “I don’t see how she can help. We’d probably be better off just changing the phone number again.”

  “And how long would it be before whoever is calling gets that number?” Emily asked. “Just because you have a problem with authority doesn’t mean Jeri can’t help.”

  Marisol glared at her. Then she looked at me and folded her arms across her chest, words coming reluctantly. “I’m a volunteer too. At a counseling center for battered women. We’ve had trouble before, with husbands who want to get another crack at their wives.”

  “And sometimes the anger gets directed at the counselors instead,” I said.

  “At anybody who’s convenient.” Marisol’s mouth had a bitter twist as she said the words. Given her obvious distrust of men and cops, I wondered how close to the bone this issue cut.

  “Any recent incidents, directed at you?”

  “The creeps I see, they’re not interested in stomping a bunch of plants. They like beating up on the women in their lives. Or the kids.”

  She hadn’t really answered my question. “But has anything been directed at you, Marisol?”

  She hesitated, but Rachel shot her a pointed look. “All right, all right,” she snapped. “There is this one creep. We’ve had trouble with him before. Every time his wife leaves him and goes to a shelter, he comes to the center and makes threats. Then she goe
s home and the whole damn cycle starts over. The wife came in looking for help again. I got her and the kids into a shelter. I hope to God she stays put this time.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last Friday, a week ago.” She looked at me with opaque brown eyes. “Monday after class I went over to the counseling center. He was there, royally pissed, wanting to know where she was, threatening all the counselors.” Marisol squared her jaw. “I don’t intimidate easily. I threw the bastard out. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “Have any of you had the feeling that you’re being watched or followed?” I saw the women look at each other. I’d experienced that feeling before. It started as a prickly sense of awareness between my shoulder blades, followed by a quick glance over my shoulder that revealed nothing, or perhaps a shadow in my peripheral vision. From the unspoken looks that were moving like electric currents around the kitchen, I knew that someone else in this room had felt that too. But no one said anything.

  Now I looked at Nelson, the only adult left, except for the absent Ben. “What about you? You said you hadn’t gotten any phone calls. Ever see anyone out of the corner of your eye?”

  “Me?” He shrugged and flashed his wide grin. “If someone were following me, they’d have to hit me with a book bag before I’d notice. I just hustle my butt, study, try to keep my grade point up so my folks will keep paying for my exceedingly expensive education. I do work, by the way. I tutor.” I smiled at the image of this gangly-looking kid tutoring other students. But he wouldn’t be enrolled at U.C. Berkeley if he weren’t intelligent and at the top of his high school class.

  Nelson raked a hand through his untidy hair. “The women I date all want to go out with me because I’m such a sensitive twenty-first-century guy,” he continued, to the accompaniment of a derisive snort from Marisol. “In other words I do know how to take no for an answer. I would never hit anyone, male or female. And I fully support a whole range of issues from abortion rights to affirmative action.” He placed his hand on his chest, then his smile disappeared.