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

by Martin Brown

  The careful policing of traffic violations was particularly galling to someone, who minutes after receiving a citation, arrived home to find that their house had been burglarized.

  That led to a steady flurry of letters to the weekly Standard about “our well-paid police who are busy working speed traps while thieves are cleaning out our homes of jewelry and other valuables.”

  Rob knew that his often-critical coverage of the Sausalito PD was well-received by many of the town’s well-connected, and even more importantly, a majority of his readers.

  His less than cordial relationship with Petersen’s police force was counterbalanced by his close relationship with the county sheriff’s department, where his fellow high school basketball teammate, Eddie Austin, served as the department’s chief detective inspector.

  Eddie shared Rob’s view that the Sausalito PD was “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” He and Rob also knew the situation was exacerbated by the two departments having jurisdictions that bordered one another. The Waldo Grade on the Highway 101 corridor serves as the dividing line between Sausalito to the east, and the Marin Headlands to the west. Sparks flew when either department stepped outside its boundary. And, as Eddie, an experienced investigator, knew better than most, when the Sausalito PD did not have the manpower or expertise to meet the task, he was called in to work closely with his comrades in blue.

  Finally, it was easy for Rob to dislike Petersen, since his father, Ron Timmons, the retired Sausalito fire chief, and the police chief annually battled over their fair share of the city’s total budget for emergency services.

  “Relationships in small towns,” Ron once explained to his son, “can get as tangled as hooks and fishing lines. It’s often not intentional, but the same people keep chasing the same catch. People have mostly good intentions, but their egos keep getting in the way.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was always a bit of a tightrope walk for Warren—the what, where, when, and how of dishing the dirt. Most importantly, of course: the who! Many factors had to be carefully considered. This meant keeping secrets from one, sharing them with another, laying out a plan of attack, and all the time staying aware of the fact that telling too little meant not gaining attention. Whereas, telling too much meant losing control of whatever intriguing gossip was in your possession.

  Warren’s life was the antithesis of what Mark Twain famously suggested, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

  Later that afternoon, in which his caramel chicken was praised and devoured, Warren was at his word processor preparing his weekly column. His fingers were curled menacingly over the keyboard. He ached to tap out the name Grant Randolph, but held back, as he had on a variety of topics so many times in the past.

  Instead, he filled the column with several of his usual ramblings about the differences between cats and dogs, the need to keep our “small city’s streets tidy, in spite of the daily abuse they encountered as tourists trampled through carelessly discarding unfinished ice cream cones, ketchup packets, and hot dog wrappers!”

  He favored ending with a lament about the woeful absence of manners in today’s youth. “We were raised to respect our neighbors’ right to quiet and privacy. Has kindness and consideration disappeared altogether?” Warren frequently asked his readers.

  Each Wednesday, when the paper containing his latest admonishments landed in every single mailbox in town, Warren anticipated several calls from admirers praising his latest effort. But while praise was the expressed purpose of their call, most of his callers were leading up to the inevitable question: “Well Warren, what do you hear in your travels through town?” And since most of these callers were age seventy-five or older, Warren was in the habit of speaking up.

  His usual approach was to start with a question: For example, Warren said, “Did you know that Penelope Jones is planning to remarry?”

  His listener might respond, “Why, I didn’t think her divorce was even finalized!”

  “That was my first thought,” Warren might add with an innocent giggle.

  From that point, the conversation would devolve to increasingly less kind speculation.

  Warren: “Bill Butler apparently is going to need a hip replacement. I was wondering, do you think it’s his wife pushing him down the stairs, or that he just fell down drunk all on his own?”

  Listener: “Oh, Warren, you’re so right about that! That man’s life would improve immeasurably if he could keep away from the bottle.”

  Warren’s phone circle were all members of the Sausalito Women’s League; most for forty years or more. “The League,” as it was most often referred to, started back in the early years of the Twentieth Century, and was organized as a clandestine effort to support the suffragette movement. Over the intervening years, the League grew into the paramount social set for Sausalito’s established gentry.

  Alma Samuels’ service as president emeritus was all the proof needed of the club’s high standing in local society.

  Thirty years earlier, Samuels—who was the one person in Sausalito in whom social and political power reached its pinnacle—formed her own tight-knit circle called the Ladies of Liberty, of whom Marilyn Williams, age 72, was the youngest member.

  Within this group, most of Bradley’s columns were received with a blend of giggles and false admonishments. “Oh, Warren, you are just awful!” they’d tease him after he put into print a particularly juicy bit.

  He’d chuckle with a conspiratorial tone and say, “I suppose I just can’t help myself!”

  Early each week, before his column was due, Warren’s phone would ring. Invariably, Alma Samuels was the caller. This was Warren’s opportunity to invite himself up to her expansive and sadly empty mansion on one of the highest hills in Sausalito, where on most days the views of Richardson Bay are a breathtaking collage of blue water and white sails, against the backdrop of Tiburon’s rolling green hills and dazzling estates.

  “Alma,” Warren said in a volume a bit higher and certainly more ominous than usual, “you will simply not believe the trouble Grant Randolph has gotten himself into. It’s too delicious to tell you over the phone I have to see your reaction with my own eyes.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for, Warren? Get yourself up here,” Alma croaked, and then added with a flirtatious giggle, “Prying minds need to know!”

  In the business of gossip, Warren was the dominant, and his listeners were the submissives. He would share a little, and his recipients would respond that this was bad, this was awful, and then plead for a little more.

  It was a naughty little game that Warren and Alma had performed many times.

  The Samuels Mansion sat on a leveled lot up near the top of Monte Mar Drive. The street was less traveled than many of the other roads in Sausalito, all of which eventually lead down to the bay and the small city center.

  Its lack of traffic was one of the pluses that attracted Roger and Alma Samuels to purchase the home in the late 1960s, well before Sausalito emerged from what many thought were the dark days of the counterculture.

  In that era, the Samuels rarely visited the center of town where, on weekends, hippies often stripped down to their underwear, or less, to frolic in the fountain that graced the small, green, palm tree-lined city center park, Vina Del Mar. (Interestingly enough, twenty-five years later, one of those nude bathers served a brief term as the city’s mayor—a topic rarely mentioned in polite society.)

  The old place was desperately in need of repair. But both Alma and Roger—a securities attorney who had a cold distant heart and a keen observant mind—could see its great potential. The house sat on a wonderful piece of land, with broad vistas that stretched from Mount Tamalpais to over half of San Francisco Bay. The iconic Golden Gate Bridge was not visible, nor the San Francisco skyline, but the views it did have were picture-postcard worthy, nonetheless. And so, the up-and-coming attorney and his adoring wife took a chance on a community that had seen grander days, and
put their money into the aging mansion that had what Roger Samuels called, “respectable old bones.”

  The mansion turned out to be a wise investment. What sold for $115,000 in 1968 was valued at (depending on which one of Sausalito’s ever gracious and endlessly aggressive real estate agents you asked) twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty million dollars.

  Warren Bradley got a certain thrill simply driving up to the grand old home, which in the past half century had gone through numerous updates and improvements.

  While it was indeed grand, and while Roger Samuels had left a generous estate that assured Alma’s future, regardless of the number of years she lived, the care she needed, or the maintenance that the home might require, there was still a feeling of sadness to the place.

  Alma’s one child, a daughter who had followed her father’s footsteps into the world of business law, was long gone from the house. For many years, Alma had been left on her own to wander from one empty room to another. And although she tried to keep herself busy, the burden of her eighty-plus years had clearly begun to weigh her down.

  Only one fulltime staff person remained in Alma’s employ: Louise, who over the past thirty years had evolved from maid and cook, to caretaker and social secretary.

  It was Louise’s tired smile that greeted Warren when he rang the bell.

  “Hello, Louise, how are you today?”

  “Fine, Mr. Bradley.” Louise rolled her eyes at his gracious condescension. “Is Ms. Alma expecting you?”

  “She is indeed.”

  “I’ll tell her you’re here. Why don’t you wait for her here in the sunroom?”

  As Louise departed, Warren paused to breathe in the air of great wealth. He preferred the smell of old money and real power to the sweet scent of fresh cut roses.

  Warren never had actual wealth. Rather, he had what he thought of as “acquired comfort.” He lived in a small, lovely cottage that he’d purchased for a very small sum from a lonely widow who died twenty years earlier. Some said that he’d stolen the house out from under her. Others decided not to consider whatever circumstances were involved.

  His clothes and material goods were aged, but carefully maintained. Being a cautious consumer can make up for many financial shortcomings. Bypassing Sausalito’s outrageously expensive grocery store and various food boutiques in favor of salmon, steaks, and chicken acquired at Costco provided the respectable basics for many lavishly presented gourmet meals. The fifty-mile round trip drive to the northern part of Marin County was a small sacrifice, given his tight budget. Warren simply made certain to carry his acquisitions into his house in unmarked boxes and discretely dispose of any Costco labels in a city trash bin, never in his own refuse, left out weekly for pickup on the curb.

  As all great gossips know, prying eyes can be found anywhere, and garbage often provides a trove of hidden truths.

  Alma stepped cautiously but confidently into the sunroom, where Warren was enjoying the view. One of her closest friends, Beatrice Snyder, had recently broken her hip after a fall. Alma was determined to avoid a similar fate.

  “Alma, my dear, how are you?” Warren asked, as he kissed her hand and smiled warmly.

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Alma said, as she gave an anemic smile in response to Warren’s touch before making herself as comfortable as possible in an old Chippendale-back chair that had been relegated to the sun room years ago.

  Cold bitch, Warren thought, while making certain a smile remained brightly upon his face.

  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.

  “Now, Warren,” she began in the imperious tone Warren had heard so many times before, “what’s this business about Grant Randolph?”

  As he always did, Warren spun a tale over a period of ten minutes that would have taken anyone else two minutes to tell. But since his only currency was information, he was a master at presenting a few spare facts as an epic tale.

  “Well, well! I can tell you, Warren, I’m not at all surprised. That man has a mean streak in him, and I just knew it.”

  “If I didn’t know that before, my dear, I certainly know it now,” Warren said with a false look of shared concern.

  “I hope you think twice before putting any of this in the paper. You can never be sure what kind of people you’re dealing with. For years, we had a better group of people moving into Sausalito. Now, I just don’t know. These young social climbers are not to be trusted.”

  “Alma, my dear, I couldn’t put it better myself.”

  Mrs. Samuels’ advice was indeed music to Warren’s ears. He had no intention of sharing his best scoops with random readers. Plus, he cowered from the thought of being under the same dark cloud his publisher was frequently under. Reporting hard news made you a target—not from the threat of physical harm, but of being socially ostracized. A teller of truths that many don’t want to hear—and others are enraged simply by seeing in print—carries a heavy burden.

  So much good gossip not going into his column was one of the unhappy realities of the news business: many of your best ideas never got a chance to appear in print. Still, Warren had already typed out the headline “Art Commission Chairman Randolph Paints an Ugly Picture” and saved it to a file marked Randolph, in the hope that his cleverly crafted declaration might appear next to his byline one day.

  Alma gathered her strength and said, “Well, what’s to be done about this? It would be an outrage for Randolph to be allowed to stay on. A violent man in a distinguished community position? That’s unacceptable!”

  It quickly occurred to Warren that perhaps he was already in a bit too deep. He was in the gossip business. If it was Alma’s presumption, however, that he wished to play the white knight, she was sorely mistaken.

  Warren paused and uttered an extended “Well,” which gave the impression that he was deep in thought. Then he began, “I have eyes and ears everywhere. First, we’ll have to see if his poor wife pushes forward in filing charges 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, as if nothing happened.”

  Warren was truly flying by the seat of his pants. To begin with, he was ignorant as to the extent of Mrs. Randolph’s injuries. His only actual knowledge was that the police had been called by one of the Randolph’s neighbors, who was reporting a possible domestic dispute.

  Apparently, when the Sausalito patrol car arrived at their home, 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 assumption of an abused wife was not something Alma was going to allow to go away.

  “There is no way that man should be allowed to continue in his current position,” Alma said once more; this time with even greater conviction. “While I still believe you want to be careful about what you put in your column, you’re in the best position to tell other members of the commission just what sort of man they are dealing with. As you know, Warren, Sausalito is a town of just seven thousand people, but only a few hundred of us really count. 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 deeper.

  “Eight months from today, we hold our annual Fine Arts Gala. To have that man hosting such an important evening just won’t do! I’m sure you agree!”

  At this stage, Warren could do nothing more than agree. Like a commuter chasing a departing ferry, breathlessly he squeaked, “Oh, you’re right Alma, you’re right!”

  Enough silence stood between them that the ever-hovering Louise th
ought 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 certain cue that it was time for him to go.

  He lifted his rumpled self from the soft wingback and bid a silent farewell to the gracious home with its extended views.

  “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,” Alma concluded with a resolve Warren believed he had not heard in her voice in years.

  As his car journeyed down the steep road leading back toward his home, Warren thought about what had just transpired. In his experience, gossip was rarely intended to turn into tangible action. Rather, it was a flavor, like nectarine juice in a red wine sauce, savored briefly on the tongue, and then remembered only by its afterglow.

  He had certainly stirred the pot.

  He hadn’t anticipated such a bitter aftertaste.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rob Timmons’ weekly routine would have exhausted most people, but it was a schedule Rob was well accustomed to seven years after his purchase of the Sausalito Standard.

  Historically, the paper came out weekly, arriving in homes every Wednesday. But a year after buying the paper for a surprisingly small sum from its aging and retiring founder, Rob struck upon a clever idea. If he took the paper’s center twelve pages and put a different four page “wrap” around each week’s edition, he could greatly expand his reach, and more importantly, the value of his advertising. Thereby, for example, the Belvedere/Tiburon Standard arrived with its own cover, and several news stories unique to the two communities directly across Richardson Bay. Over the next two years, Rob expanded into Mill Valley, and then started a fourth edition which covered the central Marin County communities of Kentfield, Ross, San Anselmo, Greenbrae, Larkspur, and Corte Madera, all of which were crowded into a relatively small part of the central portion of the county known as Ross Valley. The one thing all ten of these communities had in common: each was among the highest family-income zip codes in America—in other words, neighborhoods where the listing of a home with a price of one million dollars or less was viewed as a “fixer upper.”