The Gossiping Gourmet

by Martin Brown

  “They’re arresting Chris Harding for the murder of Warren Bradley.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, no! That can’t be! He’s—he’s such a sweet guy!”

  “Come on, Holly,” Rob said. “I have a few things I've wanted to tell you since early yesterday.”

  Chris woke up a few minutes later to find Holly gone and his bed surrounded by a SWAT team, two Sausalito patrol officers, and Eddie.

  “Not good, huh?” were Chris’s first words as he pulled on his cuffs.

  “No, not good, buddy,” Eddie responded.

  “Where’s Holly?

  “Back out there, still looking for Mr. Right.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The news of Chris Harding’s arrest for the murder of Warren Bradley was an even bigger shock to Sausalito society than the killing of the gossiping gourmet.

  The evening television news gave it ninety seconds. The San Francisco papers put it below the fold. And the county’s one daily, The Independent, had a headline that read:

  Sausalito Police Officer Arrested in Slaying of Local Chef and Columnist

  By Tuesday, the story was placed on the back burner awaiting a trial and a jury verdict. That same day, Rob’s office phone rang incessantly. For the citizens of Sausalito, the arrest of Chris Harding created more questions than answers.

  Rob finished that week’s Sausalito edition with Karin’s help—as Holly spent Monday and Tuesday in bed with a box of tissues and what she insisted was the worst hangover of her life.

  Dozens of phone messages and email questions went unanswered, including two from Alma, who left one voicemail pleading with Rob for answers.

  Wednesday morning, as mail carriers across Sausalito dropped that week’s edition of The Standard, all their questions were answered.

  As the Ladies of Liberty, the Siricas, arts commission members, and countless others in the tight-knit circle of Sausalito’s friends and frenemies opened their weekly paper, they found that Rob had fulfilled the charge Alma had given him: “Lift every rock to see what evil lurks beneath.”

  Alma shuddered with horror as she read The Sausalito Standard's headline:

  Homicide and Arrest Reveal the Secret Life of Warren Bradley

  For Warren’s staunchest admirers, the story was a tsunami of bad news. It erased all they imagined they knew about the man and left only bitter facts in its wake.

  There was William Benedict’s trial for the killing of Elaine Hayden; the charges of pedophilia; the heartbreaking story of Hayden’s son, James, that was followed by the equally tragic tale of young Chris Harding.

  The sum of which redefined Warren Bradley's place in Sausalito's long history of heroes and villains.

  By the time he came up for trial, Chris Harding had been transformed into a poster child for neglected and molested foster children. Those fortunate enough to win one of the few available seats at the Marin County Courthouse wept along with jurors as Chris’s legal team retold his story, starting with the day William Benedict entered his life, and concluding with the day he ended Warren Bradley’s life.

  “But, why the hands, Mr. Harding? Why did you sever the hands of Mr. Bradley?” the prosecutor asked.

  “I loved my brother James and my foster mother Elaine, even though I knew them for too little time. After they were gone from my life, I was handed off from one awful foster home situation to another. For years, I thought about Benedict’s hands. Those hands pushed Mrs. Hayden down a flight of stairs. Those hands molested me and my brother, James.”

  “But Mr. Harding, at age seven, you testified that Mr. Benedict had not molested you.”

  “I was just a small boy terrified by everything that had happened. I was separated from James and placed in a different children’s shelter. One of the boys there told me that if I said I had been molested, other kids and adults would make fun of me. But, just like James, Benedict molested me as well. I hated the memory of his filthy hands touching me even more than I hated him,” Chris insisted, as he broke down in sobs that echoed from every corner of the courtroom. Half of the jurors choked back tears.

  After his testimony, the judge declared a recess in the proceedings for the balance of the day.

  Just as the prosecution’s missteps in Flagstaff helped set William Benedict free, the outcome for Chris Harding was equally fortunate.

  By the time the trial neared its conclusion, the jury, angered by what they had heard from a long line of experts, was in all but open rebellion against the prosecution. The district attorney struck a deal with the defense: Chris Harding would plead not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and be placed in a state prison for a period of one year. At the end of that year, a court-appointed psychiatrist would determine if he should be allowed to re-enter society.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rob’s coverage of the murder, arrest, and trial of Chris Harding earned him a feature story in The New Yorker magazine. The piece was entitled, “The Secret Life of the Gossiping Gourmet.”

  Chris agreed to be interviewed for the article, which gave Rob an exclusive story of great interest to his hometown’s readers. Rob hoped the remaining questions he had about this strange story would finally be answered.

  Harding was being held in the psychiatric unit of a state prison located just north of the City of Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County. Rob walked in and met him in a private room that the jail had provided for their use. Chris looked relaxed and at peace with himself.

  One guard sat quietly in a far corner of the room. No one seemed particularly concerned that there would be any sudden acts of violence. Nevertheless, Rob, who was only accustomed to interviewing people who had made hurtful comments about their fellow citizens, was still uneasy. Fortunately, Chris Harding’s relaxed smile and comfortable manner made Rob quickly forget how dangerous he’d once considered him to be.

  “How did you know that Warren Bradley wouldn’t recognize you when you met him as an adult for the first time?” Rob began.

  “I wondered about that. But when I sat next to him for an hour at the monthly department luncheon, I knew that wouldn’t be a problem. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. The last time I was in his presence, I was seven. When I expressed interest in learning how to cook, he eagerly offered to give me private lessons,” Chris winced. “It was obvious that he welcomed the opportunity to be alone with me. I knew then that I’d easily have my chance.”

  “Why did you decide to share with Warren the domestic violence call you responded to up at the Randolphs’?”

  “That whole thing was like a gift from the gods. When I was called to the Randolphs’ home, I knew I had some gossip that Bradley would find impossible to resist. It played out better than I could have imagined. When Grant Randolph almost cold-cocked Bradley in front of half the town on opera night, I knew I’d never get a better chance. Besides everything he had written about Randolph in The Standard, here you have the guy looking like he’s ready to beat the creep to a bloody pulp. I played it cool, but I knew this was my best chance. The next day I called Bradley from a pay phone and asked if he had the time to give me a cooking lesson that week. He made a big deal about my being his ‘savior,’ and he was only too happy to give me some pointers on cooking.”

  “How in the world did you track Bradley down in the first place? He did a reasonably good job of covering up his past. I should know, Holly and I spent an entire weekend trying to track him down and got nowhere.”

  “While I was with the San Jose PD, I took a long weekend to visit Flagstaff. Mrs. Hayden had a friend who worked at the Coconino County clerk’s office. She babysat for me a few times. Nice lady. I arranged to take her to lunch the day I arrived in town and asked if anyone had ever heard anything more about Benedict. She knew through the sheriff’s office that he had settled in Tulsa and filed a name change going from Benedict to Bradley. Of course, that was years earlier. I tracked Bradley from Oklahoma back here to California. I finally located him in Sausalito. I put my name
on a waiting list for an opening with the Sausalito PD and got hired six months later. The fact that Bradley made those volunteer lunches for the department was another stroke of good luck. But either way, I would have tracked him down. Small towns are not an easy place to blend into the crowd. And with Bradley turning himself into a minor celebrity it was that much easier.”

  “Sounds like you had wanted to kill Benedict for a very long time.”

  “You might say it was a cross between a fantasy and an obsession.”

  One last question had made Rob more curious than any other. “You almost got away with the perfect crime. You left the house clean of prints. From what Eddie Austin says there were no obvious signs of a homicide until you decided to chop off Bradley’s hands. I know you spoke at the trial about your severing his hands, but I still feel there is more to the story. Is there?”

  “Over the past twenty-five years, I’d imagined killing Benedict a thousand times in a hundred different ways. That night, I kept refilling his glass with wine in the hope that it would put him into a sound sleep. It worked just as I had hoped. By the time I put the pillow over his head, I don’t think he had become aware that he was unable to breathe until moments before he lost consciousness. There was no struggle. Afterward, I went around cleaning up everything I had touched and tossed in a plastic bag any trace of my DNA—napkins and such.”

  “No one would have known this was a murder,” Rob said softly.

  “I realized that,” Chris grimaced. “As I was getting ready to leave, I looked at him and thought how peaceful he looked. I killed him, but what if I had done such a good job that the story of his life ended with people all talking about this good man who did all this great volunteer work, and died peacefully in his sleep? I imagined all those little old ladies telling me what a great guy dear Warren was! And that’s when I snapped. I grabbed that expensive meat cleaver off the counter and whacked off his hands—and I certainly enjoyed doing that. I was sure the world would ask one simple question: ‘Why did this happen to poor Warren?’”

  It was chilling to Rob how logical an utterly insane act could sound.

  On the hour-plus ride back to Sausalito, Rob kept thinking: What in the world would I have done?

  A foster child finally placed in a loving home, and then it all turns into a nightmare.

  Your new mom is dead, the new big brother you thought you had is now out of your life; you’re taken from one home to another, and you have only one thought: Someday I will destroy that man.

  There were two things Rob wanted to do when he arrived back home. First, hold and hug his two young children as he never had before. Second, be thankful for Karin, their home, and all the other beautiful aspects of his life, which he too often took for granted.

  Three months later the article’s release in The New Yorker was celebrated at the No Name Bar.

  “I’ll bet when you were covering the two-year debate over improvements to Sausalito’s dog park, you never thought this would happen!” Holly said as she lifted her glass high for a toast. “Here’s to a great writer, a good friend, and a reasonably decent boss.”

  “So, Holly, will you be resurrecting your relationship with Chris Harding after the shrinks say he’s free to go?” Eddie asked.

  Holly shrugged. “He’s a terrific guy, and certainly easy on the eye. It’s tragic what happened to him, but I don’t think we have a future together.”

  “Why not, Nancy Drew?”

  “I can give you ten reasons,” Holly said as she raised both her hands and wiggled her fingers in Eddie’s face.

  He gave a long laugh and said, “You can’t give a guy a hand when he needs it most?”

  Holly shook her head adamantly. “I’d rather appear small-minded with hands, than broadminded without them.”

  In remarkably little time Warren Bradley’s memory was purged from the carefully crafted histories of Sausalito.

  “He deceived us!” Alma declared. She forbade the mention of his name in her presence. In fact, she and the Ladies of Liberty never spoke again of the man she had once greatly admired. The contributions gathered for Warren’s memorial statue were returned to the donors without a note of thanks or explanation.

  Just days after Chris Harding’s arrest, Grant and Barbara Randolph came back to their lovely cottage by the bay.

  Within two weeks, they received invitations to a half-dozen gatherings. It was surprising and gratifying for both of them to witness their resurrected social standing inside Sausalito’s smart set.

  Nevertheless, a year after Warren Bradley’s death, the Randolphs quietly placed their home on the market and left Sausalito for the more tranquil and private life of Manhattan.

  Two months later news raced through town that a dot-com CEO, Patricia Smith, and her husband, Mario, had purchased the Randolph home.

  On the week they arrived and settled in, Oscar and Clarice Anderson came to welcome their new neighbors bringing a plate of cherry fudge brownies.

  The successful young couple invited them in. When Patricia Smith took her first bite of the heavenly brownies introduced to Clarice by the Gossiping Gourmet, she exclaimed, “These are delicious! Do you mind giving me the recipe?”

  Clarice hesitated and considered her response. For just a brief moment, the image of Warren standing at her doorstep holding his brownies, anxious for her to share what she and Oscar knew about the Randolphs, flashed through her mind.

  Finally, Clarice smiled and said, “I’m happy to, my dear. It’s an old recipe that has been in my family for years.”

  THE END

  Thank You!

  Dear Reader,

  * * *

  I want to thank you in advance for your appreciation of my novels. If you enjoy them, I welcome you to leave a review online—no matter how short—specifically on the bookstore’s website.

  * * *

  I’ve linked to it here for you…

  * * *

  Doing so is the best way to help others find my books. For that and being a reader, I thank you!

  * * *

  —Martin Brown

  NEXT UP!

  Read an excerpt here

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  A few minutes after five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, near the end of another busy week, Rob Timmons, publisher of the Standard Community Newspapers, and Holly Cross, his production manager, were both surprised to hear the office's doorbell ring.

  “Who the heck is that?” Holly snapped, more than ready to get out of the office and start her weekend.

  “Whoever it is, I hope they’re in and out of here in a hurry,” Rob replied. “We're supposed to meet Eddie for drinks at Smitty’s in less than thirty minutes.”

  “I better go take a look.”

  Holly rushed past Rob and looked down the steep staircase from the top floor landing of the two-story Victorian walk-up that housed the newspaper. “It’s Sylvia Stokes. What do you suppose she wants?”

  Sylvia, a tall, lean woman, who at sixty-four was approximately thirty years older than either Holly or Rob, was the community reporter for the Standard’s Peninsula edition.

  “Well, buzz her in,” Rob replied. “Let’s find out.”

  Hearing the buzzer, Sylvia pushed the door opened. Then, gripping the aging wood banister, stepped energetically up the steep, dimly lit stairs.

  “What’s up?” Holly asked as Sylvia hurried past.

  “Terrible news I’m afraid!” Sylvia replied ominously. “I was coming over the bridge, on my way home from the city, when I got a call from my husband, Jack. Oh, it’s just so sad!”

  “Well, don’t keep us in the dark!” Holly prodded. Her appetite for hard news was exceeded only by her hunger for local gossip.

  Rob sat down at his desk expecting to hear bad news.

  “You both know the name William Adams, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Rob said. “He and his wife Fran are on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. Hig
hly successful venture capitalists. They live up near the top of Belvedere, on Golden Gate Avenue.”

  “Yes, exactly, well there's been a terrible accident.”

  “Oh my God!” Holly exclaimed breathlessly. “Are they dead?”

  “No, not both—just Fran! She died in a skiing accident up at Heavenly, not far from their new home on Lake Tahoe.”

  “That’s pretty sad,” Rob said. “How old was she?”

  “Fran and William were both the same age, fifty-five.”

  “Yikes! Any details on how the accident happened?” Holly asked.

  “From what Jack heard from one of his friends over at Berkeley, Fran went missing yesterday near sunset when she went off course on a downhill run. The ski patrol didn’t find her until noon today. She collided with a tree. Apparently, she died instantly. Jack told me it’s called blunt force something.”

  “Blunt force trauma,” Rob said softly. "In this case the result of a body in motion meeting an immovable object.”

  “Wow, that’s so sad. I imagine they’ll have a service for her either in Tiburon or Belvedere?” Holly asked.

  "They were both members of the congregation Jack and I have been part of for years, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere. I assume that’s where they’ll hold the service."

  “How well do you know them?” Rob asked.

  “Jack and William met because both are active in a UC Berkeley alumni group, but we’ve never been close. As you can imagine, we travel in different circles, but we're certainly acquaintances, neighbors, even friends of a sort.”