The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (18 page)

“Why the hell would I want to
kill Warren Bradley?”

“I know that, but in any
normal investigation, your story would have been analyzed for discrepancies.”

“What are you getting at?”

“It’s simple, Rob. You should
do a feature on finding Bradley. It tells the readers that, not only was he a
contributor to the paper, but that you cared enough about him to find out why,
after promising you his story on time, he just vanished. It ties you into the
story in a powerful way. You have a personal connection with the victim that
other area reporters can only dream of.” He smiled. “It also a great set-up for
running Bradley’s last column—those final words he promised to send, but never
got the chance to deliver. All of this sets it up to make the real killer just
as comfortable as we could possibly want him.”

“I have to admit, Inspector,
you can be one smart SOB when you want to be.”

“I love you too, pal. Now, go
make Miss Alma proud!”

Rob came home to an empty
house. Karin had left a note, with her signature Hershey’s Kiss sitting next to
her X’s and O’s, explaining that she’d taken the kids down to Dunphy Park to
throw fishing lines out into Richardson Bay. It was unlikely that they would
catch anything with the kiddie rod-and-reel sets that they had gotten for
Christmas, but at ages five and three, it provided them with two hours worth of
diversion while Karin caught up on this week’s copy of
People
.

There was no better time to
tackle the first article in what Rob suspected might be many pieces about the
Bradley case—at least, while the killing remained unsolved.

Rob knew many murders went
unsolved. Perhaps this would be one of them. And yet, in a town where the
mailman kisses the lonely traveling salesman’s wife on a Tuesday and it’s the
gossip heard everywhere by Thursday, he could not bring himself to believe that
Warren’s murder would forever remain a mystery.

Somewhere in town, someone
knew something, or surely had overheard someone.

Eventually, the whole story
would begin to unwind, and the killer would finally be exposed.

As he began inputting the
first few words of his story, he felt more than a bit guilty about the sense of
elation that came over him. He was so tired of working stories about sewage
treatment plants, dog park disputes, and school science fairs that, clearly,
the story of Warren’s death was the sort of very different challenge he needed
as a journalist.

Just weeks before, he had
said to Karin, “One more story about a downtown design review board dispute,
and I might lose my mind.”

“Honey, you cover the
community stuff that so few people cover anymore.”

“I know, I know,” he said in
a soft voice, with the resolve of a long-distance runner trying to catch a
second wind.

Rob wondered if Warren might
never have been killed if he hadn’t used his column at the
Standard
as
his own bully pulpit. After all, his slaying wasn’t a case of being in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Random, deranged killers don’t knock on doors at
the end of quiet streets in Sausalito and say, “I was just thinking, it’s been
ages since I suffocated someone and then chopped their hands off with a meat
cleaver. Mind if I come in and join you for dinner?”

Rob’s rational mind knew his
guilt was misplaced. The righteous vitriol that Warren spewed in his column
hadn’t warranted his murder, and if it had, as Eddie pointed out, the killer
would never have acted in such a methodical fashion.

Warren’s killer wasn’t
someone who had arrived after his dinner guest departed, but rather…the
murderer was the dinner guest.

Living a modest life, Rob’s
view of high stakes gambling was the twenty dollars he put up two Friday nights
each month when Eddie and he played Texas Hold ‘em Poker with a couple of other
guys who had graduated from that same senior class at Tam High. The more he
thought about this strange case, the more he thought that he would happily put
his money down on Eddie’s line of reasoning.

When Monday’s mail was pushed
through the door slot at the bottom of the steps that led up to their offices,
Holly raced down to retrieve it. “Five bucks says we’re going to have a full
Mail
Bag
section this week,” she hollered, as she rushed down the hall toward
the steps.

“I’m not taking that bet,”
Rob shouted back as Holly flew past.

Already, online, a half dozen
letters had come in—mostly tributes to the late chef. But, if Holly was right,
the “blue hairs,” as she often referred to the Ladies of Liberty, would send in
their comments the old fashion way: on light pink stationery, decorated with
flowers on top and bottom opposite corners of the page, with a matching envelope,
and a postage stamp promoting some worthy cause.

Holly sorted through the
letters like a kid throwing packages around on Christmas morning.

“Ooh, here’s one from Alma!”
She slipped a letter opener under the envelope’s seal, and opened it up with
one dramatic stroke. “I’m betting that she and her pals are already griping
about the Sausalito PD not nabbing the killer by now.”

“I wouldn’t bet a dime
against that one, either.”

Holly started to read Alma’s
missive quickly to herself, and only said, “I knew this would be good!”

“Okay, give, Holly. What does
Sausalito’s grand dame have to say from on high?”

Her eyes quickly devoured the
two pages, handwritten on rose-colored stationery in perfect penmanship
produced by a very blue ink that perfectly contrasted the page.

“Ha,” Holly declared, as she
slapped down the page and said, “Here, read it for yourself. I think you might
have a new girlfriend.”

“Oh, shit. Now what?” Rob
asked, as he grabbed the pages off the edge of his desk as Holly gave a
sinister giggle.

It started as he expected,
with Alma recalling the “artistry of Warren Bradley’s cooking…the charm and wit
of his disarming humor…his kindness and generosity…and what will be most
missed, his tireless service to the community.”

She then added, “The Sausalito
police have been longtime recipients of Mr. Bradley’s unstinting generosity, in
the preparation and presentation of a monthly gourmet luncheon for our brave
men and women in blue. I trust that they will honor his thoughtful kindness by
being vigilant and unstinting in their efforts to bring this vicious killer to
justice.”

“Wow!” Rob looked up at Holly
who winked knowingly at him. “You’re right. She laid it on pretty thick.”

“Oh, you haven’t come to the
best part, pal. Keep reading.”

He quickly scanned through a
few more lines about Warren’s Easter ham dinner at the senior center and his
gourmet cookie packages, which were distributed at Christmas each year to
dozens of neighbors and friends.

But then, Rob came to his own
name, and started to read the letter aloud.

“I guess you mean this part,
‘As a small community, we have only
The Sausalito Standard
to speak on
behalf of justice—a single voice that must remain ever-vigilant in pursuit of
the truth. I have not always been of like mind with the editorial policy of our
local newspaper—for example, when it urges modernization, while others and I
have called for restraint. But, as its publisher, Rob Timmons, demonstrated
during his moving tribute to his longtime contributor, this is a time when all
Sausalitans must stand together and insist that every resource needed will be
applied in pursuit of this killer, even if it leads to shocking revelations
involving people in high places. Now is the time when every rock must be lifted
to see what evil lurks beneath.’

“I imagine the ‘people in
high places,’ means her least favorite member of the arts commission,” Rob
murmured. “Wow, you’re right, Holly! The old girl really went all out on this
one.” He looked down and read the closing lines, “I trust that Mr. Timmons will
be a tireless voice in following the trail wherever it leads. Now is the time
for answers!”

“Sounds like you and Alma are
becoming an item.”

He shrugged. “She looks
particularly fetching out on the bay at sunset.”

“You mean, with her feet in a
block of cement?”

“Oh, Holly, you always were
the romantic.” Rob rolled his eyes. “Okay, let’s cut the crap. We’ve got a
week’s worth of papers to get out. And, by the way, on page fifteen, I’ve
decided to run Warren’s final ‘Heard About Town’
column.”

“What?” Holly squawked.
“You’re going to stir up a lot of shit if you run that! It will be like a voice
from the grave. And any chance you and Karin had of being invited to the
Randolphs will go right out the window.”

“Frankly, I see it as a final
tribute to Warren.” He wasn’t going to tell her the truth—that Eddie asked for
him to use it as a distraction to help put the real killer at ease.

“Shame on you, Rob. I get
it—great for business and all that jazz. But it sure will make Randolph’s life
miserable.”

Rob winced. He knew she was
right.

At the same time, if Eddie
was right, and the tactic helped to flush out the killer, in the long run he’d
be doing Randolph a great favor.

“If I were you, I’d watch my
back, pal. If Randolph did it, you’re
numero uno
for being victim
numero
dos
.” 

The
Standard
’s next
edition carried an unusual banner headline:

Who Murdered Warren Bradley?

Rob knew he was taking the
dramatic low road from start to finish with this approach, but if he was ever
going to have an edition of the
Standard
that was going to be read by
everyone, and avoid some of those quick trips from the mailbox to the paper
recycling bin, short of the killer’s arrest, this had to be the edition.

Knowing he needed to follow
through on the goal he set for himself of having information that no other news
outlet carried, he contacted both Warren’s neighbor and Ray Sirica for
comments.

Ray couldn’t keep the anxiety
out of his voice. Certainly by now, he must have wished that he did not have
the awful luck of going up to see Bradley at his home just hours before his
slaying.

And Ray tortured himself
about that, to which Debbie kept reminding him, “You didn’t have a crystal
ball. No one would have guessed what was about to happen to Bradley. It was
just rotten timing.”

Of course, Ray already knew
this. “Believe me,” he told her, “I wish I could wind the clock back.”

And, yes, there was a part of
him that wished he’d never sat down on the same morning at the same café in
Healdsburg where the Randolphs were having breakfast.

Sirica was frustrated, but he
was also forthcoming when Rob called for a comment about his meeting with
Bradley on that fateful night. “I thought the situation was escalating,” he
explained. “It put a really nice couple in a very bad light. I don’t mind you
quoting me as saying that I think Warren was being unkind and ungracious to
Grant and Barbara. I went up there to explain to him that their entire fight,
serious as it was, in reality, just one massive misunderstanding. But Warren
wasn’t interested in writing a story about how one misunderstanding can lead to
another and then another. In fact, he told me that he had a guest arriving in a
few moments. And then he told me, in these exact words, ‘Please leave, now.’”

That was really all the
comment that Rob needed from Ray, but he’d hoped to keep him on the phone a
little longer. At the same time, Rob knew Ray had to be somewhat uncomfortable
discussing Grant’s situation with the publisher of the paper that played a
major role in making the Randolph’s lives in Sausalito quite miserable.

Rob looked for the words to
explain to Ray that he and Warren were two very different people. “Warren’s
gossip column has upset some people in the past,” Rob explained. “This is a
small town. When some of the lifers around here decide you’re not their sort of
people, not only will they imagine that you had a part in Bradley’s killing,
they also presume you committed every murder in a two-hundred-mile radius. For
what it’s worth, the Sausalito police may refer to Grant, or you, as
‘individuals of interest,’ but I don’t know of anyone in law enforcement who
considers either of you viable suspects.”