by Martin Brown
Eddie laughed. “Who do you think you are, Sausalito’s answer to Nancy Drew?”
“Nope. I’m just a girl hoping to enjoy a cocktail with a side of murder late on a Friday afternoon. So come on Eddie, spill! Poor Warren’s soul is calling out for justice. Who put an end to that miserable weasel’s existence?”
“Not a fan, I assume?” Eddie said with a raised eyebrow.
“Not by a longshot!”
“I was just explaining to Rob that we’ve got some good theories—always an important first step in tracking down a killer when all the obvious clues are not there.”
“Goody.” Having reached the end of her drink, Holly waved at Gladys, their usual waitress, while pointing to her empty glass.
“Hangar 1 Vodka, two olives and one onion,” Holly called out.
Gladys rolled her eyes. “I know, Holly, I know!”
“Sounds like you’re here more than once every Friday,” Eddie said teasingly.
“It's not that! I'm just a better tipper than you two tightwads.”
The proof of her claim was in how quickly Holly’s drink appeared. “Here you go, doll, just the way you like it," Gladys assured her.
Rob and Eddie exchanged knowing glances.
Holly grinned. “What can I say? She’s a fast learner.”
Rob sighed. “So, Eddie, what kind of scenarios are you considering?”
“Let’s go back to what we logically know: high-quality meat cleaver or not, an elderly arthritic is not going around whacking off the hands of their murder victims.”
“What does that tell ya?” Holly asked as she sucked on an olive.
“For starters, it tells us that over half of Sausalito’s population did not commit this crime.”
That brought a shared snort of laughter from both Rob and Holly.
“Let’s keep the obvious front and center. In life, Warren was around a hundred and sixty-five pounds, and about five-foot-eight. Dead bodies that size would require a pretty strong guy to move them around. And from the point Bradley was suffocated and laid out on the floor, where it’s reasonable to assume that he had his hands chopped off, and then—”
Holly was just about to say something, when Eddie jumped in and said, “Wait for it,” shaking his finger back and forth. “…was dressed, or at least cleaned up, carried outside, placed and posed on the back porch swing. It’s likely our killer is a male, with a strong back and in pretty good shape. I suspect he frequents the gym and has a particular fondness for strength-building exercises.”
"I imagine you know that Grant Randolph is a pretty healthy forty-something,” Holly said. “I was at one of those open houses for the artist's co-op down at the Marinship, and I saw him. Tight waist, broad shoulders, big arms. I mean, hubba hubba! He Tarzan, me Jane."
"I get the feeling you were impressed by Commissioner Randolph's physique?" Rob asked teasingly.
"You bet I was," Holly declared. Perching at the very edge of her chair, she turned back to Eddie and asked, “So, knowing that, where do you go from here?”
"I'll tell you this much, Holly: If Grant Randolph was his killer, he's a real whack job to murder Bradley at a time when he would instantly be suspect numero uno. The first thing I did was a pretty detailed background check on Randolph through the NYPD database. No priors and no record of him being involved in physical altercations of any sort. He might be physically capable of hurting Bradley, but that doesn't mean he did."
“That's good news," Holly agreed. "I would hate to see people like Alma and her crowd be right for once in their lives. If they could, they'd string him up today."
"Sounds like you’re right, Eddie, this one's not going to be easy," Rob said, finishing up the last of his beer.
"I’m afraid not; it's probably going to be a long slog, but we’re going to have to dig a lot deeper into Bradley’s life and learn something about everyone he knew. Remember, the one saving grace in a murder investigation is the vast majority of victims knew their killer.” Deep in thought, Eddie folded his cocktail napkin in half and then added, “We have no evidence of a break-in. Warren's place was neat as a pin. Bradley didn’t own much outside of his fancy cookware and utensils, and none of his possessions appear to be missing. We found his wallet in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser with one hundred and twenty dollars inside. And there was an old but rather pricey watch sitting next to it.”
“Nothing of value was taken? How about his hands?” Holly chirped.
“Yes, the hands,” Eddie said. He looked as if he was about to say something more, but stopped.
Silence sat uncomfortably between the three friends.
Rob and Holly looked at each other, then asked in unison: “And the hands?”
Eddie shrugged. “It may have been a diversion. Whoever killed Warren wanted to make some kind of statement. Propping him up on that back porch swing was part of that statement.”
“Or maybe,” Rob said slowly, “it was a warning.”
“Warning?” Holly asked. “About what?”
He shook his head. “I don't know, maybe a mob thing like, 'Keep your hands to yourself,' or something?”
Holly frowned. "What do you think he did, stole a box of family recipes from some mob guy?"
“As long as I have you two master sleuths here, I want to bring up something else,” Eddie said as he leaned in closer.
“We’re all ears,” Holly said as she and Rob inched their chairs in even closer.
“One of the items we took from Bradley’s place was his laptop.”
“Do the cops usually do that?” Holly asked.
“It’s pretty standard, given that people keep so much information on their computers. We would have looked at his smartphone, too, if he’d had one, to check his calendar. All he had was an ancient flip phone. Anyway, we hoped he kept a calendar on his computer. The program was there, but he never used it. His cell phone had only two numbers that we could not identify. Both of those calls were made from pay phones in Sausalito. We got his home phone’s records as well. All the numbers in and out have been identified and cleared. You guys wouldn’t believe how many calls went back and forth between Alma Samuels and Bradley, not to mention some of the others in her clique—Bea Snyder, Robin Mitchell—all the usual suspects.”
“It was pretty obvious that Warren was their errand boy,” Holly said with a chuckle. “I imagine that’s where he got a good part of the gossip that found its way into his cell phone.”
“What about the pay phone calls he received?” Rob asked.
“One was from that small grocery store at the south end of Caledonia Street. The other came from the Bridgeway Café. There are only a handful of those old pay phones left in town. It’s merely guesswork at this time, but I think there’s a reasonable chance that the killer made both of those calls. One of them was made to Warren’s cell early on the afternoon of the day he was killed. The other call came in one week earlier.”
“That’s interesting,” Holly said hanging on Eddie’s every word.
“Warren planned a dinner for two the night he was killed. It appears that the killer did not attempt to remove the evidence that he had a guest that evening. The dishes had all been washed and put in the drainer. Unless Bradley used two wine glasses, two plates, two forks and so on, Warren was not alone for his last supper.”
“Does it add up to anything?” Rob asked, desperately hoping for a story angle.
“Not yet, Rob. But it helps us construct some interesting theories, such as the killer was probably not an amateur—and at the very least, no dummy, either. Murders that are the result of, say, an argument, are never as methodical as this. Crimes of passion are pretty sloppy. If the killer used a pay phone, my guess is that he or she knew that after Bradley turned up dead, checking phone records would be one of the first things an investigator was certain to do.”
“Maybe the killer’s cell wasn’t working. If so, a pay phone was the only alternative,” Holly suggested.
“
Sure, that’s possible. But, most phones today can go months, or even years, without receiving a call from a public pay phone. Bradley got two a week apart—and one of those two calls hours before his murder.”
“Why would that matter?” Rob asked.
“If we're correct and Warren knew his killer, and since both pay phone calls originated in Sausalito, the killer probably lives, works, or both, somewhere near here.”
“This is all speculation,” Holly said, looking disappointedly at her now-empty glass.
“Absolutely," Eddie said. "Unless you have a killer who staples a business card to their victim’s sleeve, that’s where you need to begin. In the absence of actionable evidence—like prints, tissue samples under a victim’s fingernails, DNA left on tossed paper napkins or tissues, and so on—educated guesswork is where the investigative process begins.”
“What about the laptop? What did you find there?” Rob asked.
“Remember when you told me that Bradley left a phone message about his column being late, but he was confident he’d have it to you well before the next day’s deadline? Well, here it is,” Eddie said as he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket.
Rob’s eyes widened as he opened Warren’s final “Heard About Town” column.
“Oh, my God! I’ve got to see this!” Holly said as she jumped up and ran behind Rob to look over his shoulder.
Both of them read the column in silent amazement:
“In the past two weeks, much has been said about the behavior of Sausalito Fine Arts Commission chair, Grant Randolph. His arrest by police, on suspicion of spousal abuse, has no doubt shocked many in our quiet, tight-knit community....”
Both Rob and Holly were transfixed by Warren’s final assault on Randolph—right through to its closing line in which he suggested that it was time for Grant’s fellow art commissioners “who value the dignity of every individual to rise up and expel this viper from our midst.”
As usual, it was Holly who first broke their silence. “Wow, the guy could really write when he put his mind to it!”
“What was the computer time stamp on this piece?” Rob asked.
“His last save of that document came at six-thirty-nine on the night he was killed.”
“Maybe he called Randolph for comment, and he came up to the house and murdered him,” Holly suggested, and then quickly added, “If they lock Randolph up and throw away the key, I wouldn’t mind being his cellmate.”
“Not so fast, Miss Drew,” Eddie said. “As I told Rob before you arrived, it’s pretty unlikely that Randolph shared dinner and two bottles of wine with Bradley before cutting off the hands that had used a computer keyboard to torment him.”
Holly, who by now was three martinis into her evening and feeling no pain, picked up her bag. “Eddie, you’ve got your theory, and I’ve got mine.”
As they watched her exit, Eddie turned to Rob and said, “Holly is such a great character. Don't you think she fits in perfectly with all the other wing nuts in this town?”
"The question now is," Rob added, "which one of those wing nuts, besides Grant Randolph, wanted Warren Bradley dead?"
Chapter Nineteen
Earlier on Friday, Alma Samuels made a surprise telephone call to Rob. In truth, they both knew she did everything she could to pretend he and The Standard didn’t exist beyond Warren’s “Heard About Town” column. All the more reason for Rob’s shock when he picked up his phone and found Alma on the line.
“Poor dear Warren’s memorial service begins at ten o’clock sharp, Saturday morning,” she said, without so much as a simple salutation. “I know he meant a great deal to you—or I should say, to The Standard. Heavens! If not for his column, I presume there would be no reason at all for your paper to exist! That being said, I presume you’ll want to speak at Warren’s memorial service.”
Rob’s first instinct was to reply in a fake voice, “Sorry, you must get wrong number,” and hang up. But, he resisted temptation.
Saturday was his one morning to sleep in—a once weekly gift to himself—but he knew it would needlessly offend Alma's army if he declined the offer. He winced at the thought of attending a Ladies of Liberty arranged farewell to their dearly departed hero, but there was no graceful way to turn down the invitation. Besides, this was a rare opportunity to prove to his detractors that he was a responsible and established voice in what is often a discordant community.
“Yes,” he muttered wearily, “I'd be happy to do that. I’ll see you—”
Alma hung up before Rob completed his acceptance.
Friday night, after Smitty’s and after dinner, Rob hastily wrote down some brief comments regarding his late columnist. He then read them to Karin as she washed and dried the dishes.
“Whatever you want to say is fine, dear,” Karin said. He realized she was paying little attention to his carefully crafted words. “Honestly, Rob, the guy always gave me the creeps. The way he went around getting into everybody’s business, exchanging pot roasts and cheese plates for gossip! You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if he knew a little too much for his own good. My mother always told me that nosy people are likely to get their noses cut off.”
Later on, when they both were in bed, Karin turned to Rob and said, “Maybe that’s why the killer chopped off his hands. It could have been a warning to others to be careful about what they put into print.”
“Eddie and I talked about that. Of course, Eddie thinks if that was the case, I might be the next one to lose my hands.”
"I hope not," Karin said as she softly held and kissed Rob's hand. “Who would give my neck a rub after a long day with the kids?"
Both shared a good laugh as they turned out their lights. But they also wondered in silence whether they had remembered to lock the back door.
Rob had almost drifted off to sleep when he remembered something Eddie had said at Smitty’s: “Nearly all victims know their killers.”
The idea was worrisome enough to keep Rob awake for another hour staring into the darkness.
Warren Bradley’s memorial service was held at the old Presbyterian Church at the top of Excelsior Lane, just two blocks uphill from The Standard's office. It's an intimate, aging, wood structure with a small town, Thomas Kinkade-like, fantasy look about it.
The crowd that turned out was large enough that a third of the mourners—those who arrived after nine-thirty—had to watch the service on two aging video monitors in the church’s basement reception hall.
The Ladies of Liberty led the effort to make the service memorable. Ethel and Marilyn were in charge of floral arrangements and musical interludes. Bea and Robin assembled the potluck brunch reception to follow the service. Tissue boxes were placed discreetly throughout the church, along with enlarged pictures of Warren: stirring a sauce, pulling a roast out of the oven, decorating a cake, decanting a bottle of wine, and posing over his laptop’s keyboard ready to strike.
Sausalito is a small community. In New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and a dozen other cities, a killer can vanish into a crowd. But that’s far harder to do in a small town. And that was why Eddie is here, Rob reasoned.
Rob had just stepped up to the dais when he noticed Holly tucking herself into a small space by the church’s door. Her eyelids were half closed. She too was not accustomed to being up at this hour on a Saturday. Rob was now certain that his associate editor had become a dogged amateur sleuth.
“Warren Bradley brought something special into our lives,” Rob began, not at all sure what that “something special” was. “His loss leaves a void that will not be easily filled.”
Rob noticed Alma and the rest of the Ladies of Liberty dabbing the corners of their eyes with lace handkerchiefs while nodding approvingly. He had long been accustomed to their disapproving glances every year at Sausalito City Hall’s annual holiday season gathering, or, individually, as they passed him on the street and pretended not to notice him. At last year’s annual July 4th community picnic, they closel
y observed Rob and Karin as they passed by with their two small children in tow. And at the annual chili cook-off competition, none of the ladies would dream of sampling his chili or cornbread.
“Like many of you, I always enjoyed reading Warren's columns in The Standard,” Rob said as he looked toward the back of the church and saw Holly rolling her eyes and mouthing, “Oh please!”
He shifted his gaze so that Holly was out of his sightline. The last thing he needed to do was giggle.
“His love of life revealed itself in everything he did, from his volunteer work to his careful preparation of some of the best gourmet dishes many of us have ever sampled.”
Rob told of those times Warren would stop by the office with leftovers from a dinner he had served guests the night before. “Warren, always generously thinking of the rest of us at the paper, would call and say, ‘Don’t go out for lunch today, I want to bring you something wonderful.’”
In truth, Rob knew this was Warren’s way of angling for extra space for his column or a more prominent byline, or perhaps the chance to confirm or deny some gossip he had heard while buzzing about town.
“In our grief,” Rob said, concluding, “let us take time to be thankful for a life that enriched us as individuals and as a community. I’ll always think of Warren preparing a gourmet dinner for the many people who loved him, and whom he loved in return. It is unlikely that any of us will meet someone as unique and as gifted as Warren Bradley again.”
Thank God, Holly mouthed silently, adding an exaggerated sneer for Rob’s benefit.
Rob wasn't sure if he had lived up to Alma's expectations. But after the service, each one of the Ladies of Liberty made it a point to go up and thank him for his “thoughtful and lovely words.”
Even Bea, a woman who wore a dour expression every day of the year, walked over to Rob and said, “Thank you for being here for Warren. One of the very last times I spoke to him, he said, ‘You have to take certain risks as a journalist if you’re ever going to get the job done.’ I’ll always think of him when I see a man or a woman in your profession risking their safety so that the rest of us can live in a better world.”