by Martin Brown
Only one full-time staff person remained in Alma’s employ: Louise Allen, who over the past thirty-five years had evolved from maid to cook and finally, caretaker. It was Louise’s tired smile that greeted Warren when he rang the bell.
“Hello, Louise, how are you today?”
“Fine, Mr. Bradley. Is Ms. Alma expecting you?”
“She is indeed.”
“I’ll tell her you’re here. Go ahead and take a seat in the sunroom.”
As Louise departed, Warren paused, as he always did, to breathe in the intoxicating air of old money.
Warren had what he thought of as “acquired comfort.” He lived in a small cottage that he purchased from a lonely, childless widow, who died twenty years earlier. Some, less than kind, claimed Warren stole the house out from under her. Perhaps it was a reward for “keeping her warm at night,” they speculated. Others decided to ignore the matter entirely.
Being a cautious consumer can make up for a variety of financial shortcomings. Bypassing Sausalito’s outrageously expensive grocery stores and various food boutiques in favor of salmon, steaks, and chicken parts purchased at Costco, which provided the essential ingredients for many of Warren's lavishly presented meals, was a wise and painless way to economize. The fifty-mile round trip drive to the northern part of Marin County was a relatively small sacrifice. Warren just made sure to carry his acquisitions into his house in unmarked boxes and discretely dispose of any Costco packaging in a city trash bin, never in his refuse left out weekly for pickup on the curb. As all great gossips know, prying eyes can be found anywhere. Garbage placed at the curb on the night prior to weekly pickup can provide a treasure trove of information.
Warren was standing at one of the room’s many windows, admiring the view of Richardson Bay and imagining how happy he would be to one day inherit this home, when Alma entered, walking cautiously. One of her longest friends, Beatrice Snyder, had recently broken her hip after a fall. Alma was determined to avoid a similar fate and took care in all her movements.
“Alma, my dear, how are you?” Warren asked, as he kissed her offered hand and smiled warmly.
“I’m as well as can be expected,” Alma said, as she gave a wan smile in response to Warren’s touch before making herself comfortable in an antique wingback chair that appeared to swallow her whole.
Warren marveled at how Alma, while facing the challenges of declining health, managed to summon the strength and interest in every bit of news he was able to bring her. His only conclusion was that Sausalito was her soap opera and she was addicted to the individual storylines of dozens of its players. Therefore, she tolerated Warren as a reliable source for what most others would consider inconsequential news.
Alma believed herself to be gracious by the simple act of inviting Warren into her home. If not for her love of gossip, he would have no place in her presence. Warren sensed this and at his core thought of her as a heartless creature, while keeping a satisfied smile fixed on his face whenever in her presence.
“Now, Warren,” she began in the imperious tone he greatly admired, “what’s this business about Grant Randolph?”
As he frequently did, Warren spun a tale over a period of ten minutes that would have taken anyone else a few minutes to tell. But since his only currency was information, he was a master at presenting spare facts in the form of an epic story.
“Well, well! I can tell you, Warren; I’m not at all surprised. That man has a mean streak in him. Beating his wife senseless. Reprehensible. I knew he was not one of us and this proves me right! Just shocking!”
“If I did not know before how awful that man is, I certainly know it now,” Warren said with a false look of deep concern.
“I hope you think twice before putting any of this in your newspaper column. You can never be sure what kind of people you’re dealing with. For years, we had a better group of individuals moving into Sausalito. Now, I just don’t know,” the old woman said with a stern expression and a shake of her head. “These young social-climbers are a different breed.”
“My dear, I couldn’t put it better.”
Alma’s advice was music to Warren’s ears. Sharing his best scoops with many of his column’s casual readers seemed like a foolish waste of a story he could deliver in smaller portions to all of the town’s most influential citizens.
He cringed at the thought of living under the same dark cloud as Rob Timmons. Reporting hard news can make you a target—not of physical harm, but for being socially ostracized. A teller of truths that many don’t want to hear—and others are enraged to see in print—can be a heavy cross to carry. A newspaper column is instantly available to everyone. On the other hand, whispered gossip allows you to select your listeners.
There was no need for Alma to press this matter. If Randolph could beat his wife, he could easily do physical harm to someone who embarrassed him in print. Still, Warren regretted that he had already concocted the perfect headline:
Arts Commission Chair Grant Randolph Paints an Ugly Picture!
He’d saved it to a file marked Randolph in the hope that his cleverly crafted declaration might one day appear above his byline.
The longer Alma thought about the incident, the more agitated she became. After a lengthy silence, she suddenly regretted her initial suggestion. “Well, Warren, what are you going to do about this? It would be an outrage for Randolph to be allowed to stay as chair of the arts commission: a violent man in a distinguished community position? That’s unacceptable!”
It quickly occurred to Warren that their conversation was going in the wrong direction. If Alma presumed that he wished to play the combatant, she was mistaken.
Warren paused and uttered an extended, “Well…” which gave the appearance that he was deep in thought. Then he began: “I have eyes and ears everywhere. First, we’ll have to see if his unfortunate wife steps forward and files a charge against him. You know, in many cases these battered women don’t pursue their tormentors. They let them back into the house and hope to continue their lives together as if nothing happened.”
Warren was indeed flying by the seat of his pants. To begin with, he was ignorant as to the extent of Mrs. Randolph’s actual injuries. His only knowledge was that the police had been called by one of Randolph’s neighbors, who reported a domestic dispute.
When the Sausalito police officers had arrived, Mrs. Randolph was sprawled across the living room floor, and her husband appeared to have been drinking heavily. For all Warren knew, Grant Randolph might have been released hours after arriving at the county jail. While it made for juicy gossip, the entire incident might amount to far more smoke than fire. Unfortunately for Warren, the possibility of an abused wife was something Alma decided she could not ignore.
“There is no way that man should be allowed to continue in his current position,” Alma said with increasing conviction. “While I still believe you need to be careful about what you put in your column, you’re in the best position to tell other members of the commission, and the community at large, what sort of man they have on the arts commission. This goes beyond simple gossip. As you know, Warren, Sausalito is a small town. We can’t do anything about Randolph choosing to live in Sausalito, but we can make certain he doesn’t serve in a position of honor and responsibility.”
Warren’s chest tightened as Alma dug in.
“Eight months from today we hold our annual Fine Arts Gala. To have that man hosting such an important event won’t do! I’m sure you agree!”
At this point, Warren could do nothing but agree. Sounding like a commuter chasing a departing Sausalito ferry early on a workday morning, he breathlessly murmured, “Oh, you’re right Alma. I should have thought of that!”
Enough silence stood between them that the ever-hovering Louise thought it appropriate to ask if either of them wished for tea.
Alma thanked her but said she was a little tired and planned on taking a nap. She dismissed Louise, then turned her cold blue eyes on Warren—a cue th
at it was time for him to leave.
He lifted his rumpled self from the comfortable wingback and silently bid farewell.
“Let me know what happens next regarding this terrible business. If Randolph isn’t relieved of his post on the commission by the time planning for the gala begins, I’ll have to rethink my support of the entire organization.” Warren had never heard such resolve in Alma’s voice.
As his car journeyed down the steep road leading back to his home, Warren thought about what had just transpired. In his experience, gossip was rarely intended to turn into action. Instead, it was a flavor, like nectarine juice in a red wine sauce. Savored briefly on the tongue and remembered only by its afterglow.
Chapter Three
Rob Timmons’ weekly routine would have exhausted most people, but it was a schedule he had grown accustomed to in the years since his purchase of The Sausalito Standard.
Historically, this community tabloid newspaper came out weekly, arriving in mailboxes every Wednesday. But a year after buying the paper for a surprisingly small sum from the estate of its founder, Rob struck upon an idea. If he left the newspaper’s center twelve pages intact, but put a different four-page “wrap” of local news around each week’s edition, he could significantly expand his readership and, more importantly, his value to advertisers. Thereby, as just one example, The Peninsula Standard, covering the neighboring towns of Tiburon and Belvedere, arrived every week with specific news stories and social columns like “Belvedere Buzz” and “Tiburon Talk” unique to those towns. Over the next two years, Rob expanded into Mill Valley, and then started a fourth edition in Ross Valley, which covered the central Marin towns of Ross, San Anselmo, Larkspur, and Corte Madera.
One thing all of these communities had in common was that each held some of the highest family income zip codes in America. Neighborhoods where the listing of a home with a price of one million dollars or less was considered a “fixer-upper.”
To the untrained eye, it may have seemed an impossible task for a news organization run by two full-time individuals: Rob, and his full-time editorial assistant/production manager, Holly Cross.
For community news coverage, Rob recruited a host of mostly retired or semi-retired volunteer contributors. The local stories they covered rarely received any attention from one of the Bay Area’s major news outlets. Nevertheless, local readers appreciated knowing about road closures or the planned opening of new bike-only lanes, along with the consideration of new taxes and property assessment changes. Each community edition also needed to cover society news such as birthdays, anniversaries, births, graduations, and charitable events. Sylvia Stokes reported on the social scene in Tiburon, Ed Dondero worked Mill Valley, and Cassie Crenshaw covered the towns of Ross Valley.
Although just thirty-seven, Rob’s hair was already flecked with gray. That, along with the web of tiny lines edging his watery blue eyes, gave him the appearance of a man several years older.
He’d grown up in Sausalito, the southern-most of the county’s web of small towns. His earliest memories centered around the town’s annual Fourth of July parade, in which Robbie (as he was known then) got to sit atop the city’s only fire truck alongside his fire chief dad. At one time, the family even had a Dalmatian named Smoke.
Two-thirds of Marin County is dedicated to local, state, or federal parkland, much of which Rob explored on foot as a boy. It was an endless maze of wooded paths, many lined with giant redwoods, and dramatic trails which crisscrossed the coastal headlands and peaked at several hundred feet before sloping down into a canyon, empty river beds, or the Pacific's edge. As teens, Rob and his friends—Eddie included—rode their bikes on the pedestrian paths that connected Sausalito with other Marin towns located in and around iconic Mount Tamalpais. Except for occasional blues and rock concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that were half music, half outdoor pot parties, Rob and Eddie, like their parents and neighbors, tended to stay on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Compared to the city’s excitement, Rob’s hometown had a slow and lazy rhythm in which each day blended quietly into the next. The summer frequently brought the chilly air that settled over much of the San Francisco peninsula from June through September. Most days were sunny and cool. Winters could occasionally bring heavy rains, but mostly the weather was as benign as the surroundings.
Tranquility was the general rule that marked Sausalito’s days and nights—provided you avoided the city’s tourist district, which stretched for approximately a mile along a waterfront street called Bridgeway where, during the peak of summer, visitors by car, bus, ferry, and bicycle overwhelmed the small town.
Awed by an idyllic location that combined houses perched on hills above boats bobbing gently in its harbor, with a verdant mountain to the north and sparkling city lights across the azure bay to the south, people who visited or settled in Sausalito found themselves entranced by its beauty. But in time, many of the residents found life in Sausalito maddeningly peaceful and retreated to more vibrant parts of the Bay Area, such as San Francisco, Berkley, Oakland, San Jose, or the rapidly expanding communities collectively known as Silicon Valley.
As an adult, Rob came to appreciate both points of view. Certainly there were more cultural, social, and business opportunities in other parts of the region, but to native Sausalitans or to those who adopted it as their home, its location and natural beauty were hard to resist. Plus, the influx of tourists during the summer and holiday weekends was a constant reminder that this was a special place to live.
Rob married Karin Klein, the daughter of a local family dentist. They settled into a rental on Easterby Street that they both called “the Love Nest.” Their son and daughter were born two years apart. By the time the children were enrolled in Sparrow Creek, Sausalito’s popular preschool, Rob’s parents had retired to a condominium in San Diego and handed Rob and Karin the keys to the family home on Filbert Street.
As far back as Rob could remember, Sausalito was a town filled with colorful characters. The most eccentric were the “houseboat people”—artists and bohemians mostly—who lived in abandoned boats and floating homes tethered along the public docks that once were part of the Marinship boatyards, which boomed in the period of World War II, during the building of the “Liberty Ships” that carried vital supplies for the war effort. Some of these individuals were decades-old fixtures, whereas others just drifted into town for a few months or a few years, and then, just as quietly, moved on.
The steady increase in property values eroded the base of Sausalito’s third and fourth generation residents; individuals who could not afford to live in the community they had grown up in. It was not uncommon inside of the two local-serving bars, Smitty’s and The No Name, to find one of the remaining children or grandchildren of Sausalito’s founding generation of merchants, fisherman, boat builders, and day laborers, assuaging their regrets over selling long-held family property. "Now I’ve got enough money to pay cash for a nice home out in the East Bay hills,” they would announce while buying drinks for friends to celebrate their newfound wealth.
Rob knew that he and Karin might make that same choice in twenty years after their kids were grown and living independent lives. But his real hope was to keep the home in the family, and if possible, live out their years there.
“A lot of people dream about ending up in a place like this,” he told Karin one mild star-dusted night after getting their children to sleep. “We’re already here. I’d like to travel one day, but after seeing the world, I think I’d be happy to return to Sausalito.”
The very first thing Warren did upon coming home from Alma’s was to open a fine Madeira. Sipping it, he wondered about his next column. Even he was growing tired of his oft-repeated complaints about careless tourists and inconsiderate teens.
How heroic would he appear if he used his column to make a direct assault on Grant Randolph? At that moment, his cell phone rang.
The caller ID flashed: "Alma S."
<
br /> He hesitated to push the talk button but knew there was no hope of avoiding Alma. She would track him down within an hour or two.
Quickly, he cleared his throat, slapped a smile on his face, and hit the talk button.
“Yes, hello Alma.”
As she often did, Alma ignored pleasantries. “I want you to call Ethel Landau and discuss this situation with her,” she barked. “Ethel’s been on the arts commission for years and supported Randolph becoming chair of the commission.”
Warren’s palms dampened as he considered the obvious: This situation was now beyond his control.
Warren was aware that anything you said to either Ethel, or Alma, quickly got back to the other.
“I’ll call her right now,” Warren promised, hoping to sound positive and cheerful.
“I’ve been thinking about this since you left my house. This man Randolph could be a black eye to the integrity of every other member serving on the arts commission, including Ethel! You are well aware of my feelings—his continuing presence on the board is unacceptable! After you have filled Ethel in on the details, I’ll speak to her as well. Call me back,” she barked, and then clicked off.
Warren could not remember Alma this animated since she organized the effort to prevent outdoor café dining in the city’s downtown district.
In fact, when anything that was popular with the town's under-fifty set was voted down by the Sausalito City Council—a body dominated by Councilmember Robin Mitchell for more than a quarter of a century—the Ladies of Liberty were assumed to be the unseen hand behind the effort.
As to chairs and tables on city streets, their unified battle cry became, “Outdoor dining indeed!” In their view, it was just another tactic by realtors, merchants, and restaurateurs to lure tourists to stay and dine and deny locals the quiet enjoyment of their downtown during most spring, summer, and autumn evenings.