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

by Martin Brown

  Everything Barbara disliked about Kitty doubled with that one comment. It didn’t help that she was ten or more years’ Barbara’s junior, with high check bones, ash tinted blond hair, exotic brown eyes, and her breasts were all but falling out of the stylish white cotton she was wearing.

  Call it a woman’s intuition, or just put it down to the glances she saw them exchange, but for the first time in many years, Barbara wondered if Grant had once again fallen victim to his own insatiable appetites.

  Before coming to Sausalito, he had seemingly ended the distractions that frequently arose in their marriage whenever he found himself interested in another woman. Barbara was never sure if it was just lustful curiosity or something more serious than that. After all, when she met Grant, he was involved with that Jamaican woman he moved out shortly before he suggested that she move in.

  Barbara also wondered if his pursuit of a perfect physique had returned to Grant not just renewed interest in their shared lovemaking, but other sexual exploits as well. A hunger so great that perhaps she was failing to satisfy him.

  There was a part of Barbara that badly wanted to share her suspicions with Grant, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Then, when she arrived home from a busy Saturday at the Moss Gallery, she detected a scent and a presence in her home she’d never noticed before. As she wandered through the empty house, it came to her that this was the same scent she had smelled on Kitty just a few days before.

  It was going on eight, Grant was not home, and there was no note and no cell phone message. Between the scent of that blond scamp that she now thought she smelled in every room of her home and the irritating image of those perky breasts that announced their presence so clearly under the light, tight cotton top she wore the night of the Gate Six reception, Barbara was convinced that Grant had taken a turn away from her and into the arms of a much younger woman.

  A fire began to burn in her that could not be extinguished by the three ice-chilled margaritas she consumed. Barbara fell asleep on the couch, wondering if Grant and his little pet had made love there as well.

  As for Grant, it was rare for him to go for a beer with Ray after an evening workout, but he did this night. Mistakenly, Grant thought that this Saturday night was the evening of Barbara’s reception at the Moss Gallery for a new artist’s exhibit. He was wrong; it was the following Saturday night. So, when Ray invited him to come back to his place, since Debbie was spending the night up in Healdsburg with an old girlfriend visiting from Chicago, Grant thought for a moment, and then said, “What the hell, why not?”

  Ray threw a couple of steaks on the grill, and the two shared another couple of beers. It was a mild night, so the two sat outside swapping stories about some of the interesting characters that they had met at Gold’s. There was the guy who did dead lifts while releasing a grunt that could be heard from one end of the gym to the other, and another guy who both Ray and Grant assumed had dropped a weight on his “noggin,” at some point, because he was just “a little off center.” He was the one who asked them both in the locker room one night if they were gay, to which Ray, not at all pleased by the question, replied, “Why the hell would you ask that?”

  The fellow looked down at the floor for a moment, trying to recall what gave him that idea in the first place, then looking up, he furrowed his brow and said, “I don’t know. I guess because I always see you both together.”

  “We share a ride,” Ray said with obvious annoyance as he loudly shut his locker’s door. Grant, who was lacing up his shoes, avoided eye contact with either of them, but laughed to himself, considering that Ray could get so irritated with a guy who struggled to have a single coherent thought even on a good day.

  By the time the steaks, and a six pack of beer had been finished off, and Ray had pulled out some very special Tequila Clase Azul for both of them to sample, and then sample again, Grant got up, with some difficulty, and suggested that it was likely Barbara was back from the gallery reception by now. Ray offered to drive him home, but Grant said it was better if he walked. “We don’t want Sausalito’s finest making you their big catch for the night.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Ray said. “Besides, this isn’t New York or Chicago; the scariest thing you’ll run into in Sausalito at this time of night is a family of raccoons raiding a trash can.”

  It was close to midnight when Barbara awoke and called out to Grant. “He’s still not home! Where the hell is that son of a bitch?” she mumbled to herself. She walked over to the kitchen counter where she had placed her cell phone earlier and started stabbing her fingers against the phone’s cold glass keyboard. Bringing up her “favorite contacts,” she angrily pressed, “GRANT.”

  But Grant, who was listening to an old Miles Davis in Paris jazz album coming through the ear buds of his iPod mini, never heard his phone as he turned onto Bulkley, just a short distance from their front door.

  A few minutes later, when he walked through the door in a relaxed, inebriated state, a ripened grapefruit flew past his head, hitting the front door with a dull thud. Barbara shouted, “Where have you been, you bastard?”

  His brain immediately sensed trouble. He knew he was under attack, but he was bewildered as to the cause.

  “Out late with your little whore girlfriend?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, you son of a bitch.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Enraged, Barbara came rushing toward him. She was carrying an oversized hardcover coffee table book—it was a three-hundred-page retrospective on the work of Salvador Dali.

  Grant’s adrenaline surged. His mind was still in a fog. Wildly, he swung his right arm forward to block the book from striking the side of his head. Instead, however, his powerful forearm cracked across Barbara’s lower left cheek and jaw, and sent her reeling backward, crashing to the floor.

  It was Barbara’s bloodcurdling scream at that moment that compelled their next door neighbors, the Andersons, to call the Sausalito police department. Although it was after midnight and the town was as peaceful as an undiscovered tomb, two patrol cars, blue lights flashing, raced up Bulkley Drive. The patrol officers, Steve Hansen and Chris Harding, knocked on the Randolphs’ front door less than three minutes after they were summoned.

  Grant, who had run to Barbara’s side to make a tearful apology, opened the door when he heard a deep booming voice say, “Sausalito police, open the door.”

  Standing there, reeking of beer, sweat, and tequila, Grant pulled open the door. He immediately told Hansen and Harding that everything was okay.

  “Sir, is that your wife on the floor?” Harding asked, “We’ll have to check on her condition.” Harding bent over Barbara, who was still laying flat on the floor looking up in a daze at the eager young faces of the two police officers. “Ma’am, are you alright? Do you need medical assistance?”

  On top of suffering from a surprisingly powerful hit, she had struck the back of her head when she hit the bare tiled floor. Barbara, whose head was ringing, responded groggily to the officers’ questions. Hansen called into the fire department to send up the EMT crew.

  Meanwhile, Harding took out his handcuffs. Before Grant fully understood what was happening, he had been restrained, and was being escorted out the front door by Harding, who then drove him up to the county jail for processing on charges of assault and battery.

  A stretcher was brought in, although, in a less than clear voice, Barbara said she thought it was unnecessary to take her to the county hospital, Marin General. But the EMT officers told her that it was a wise precaution whenever someone had suffered a blow to the back of the head.

  Oscar and Clarice Anderson, both in their eighties, stayed at their upstairs bedroom window and watched in horror as first Grant Randolph was taken out in handcuffs, followed by the shadowy figure of his wife, who was being wheeled on a gurney into the back of a Sausalito Rescue medical transport vehicle.

  “Oh, my God,” Clarice said
, while Oscar held his arm around her. “They seemed like such a nice quiet couple.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, my dear,” Oscar said softly, as they both returned to bed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  After Chris Harding’s retelling of early Sunday morning’s domestic violence call to the Randolph home while he and his fellow officers were eating their way through Warren’s caramel chicken, and after Alma and the Ladies of Liberty had turned Warren’s busy bee gossip into a call for immediate action, Bradley had few, if any, options:

  Either he would rise to Alma’s expectations, or take a significant step down in her social hierarchy. Either use this opportunity to show that his column could serve as the swift hand of justice, or risk losing his most important readers and his biggest fans.

  Then a thought occurred to him: who might have witnessed the fight and/or its aftermath?

  Late Monday, he called Bea Synder, a walking who’s who of Sausalito volunteers. He asked her who lived on Bulkley next door to, or close by, the Randolphs. Once he heard about Clarice and Oscar Anderson, he asked Bea if they were active on any of the town’s volunteer committees. Bea thought for a bit, and recalled their helping the library foundation prepare for the community garage sale.

  Moments later, Warren was busy mixing up his irresistible cherry-fudge brownies.

  In all likelihood, Oscar and Clarice Anderson would never realize how helpful they had been. They had never read Warren’s weekly column. Instead, when the Standard hit their mailbox every Wednesday, they would give the front page a quick glance, and then drop the paper in their recycling bin.

  Random chance plays a powerful hand in every life. If, for example, Beatrice, Ethel, or one of the other Ladies of Liberty had observed what Clarice Anderson witnessed at nearly one o’clock on a Sunday morning, the Sausalito gossip tree would have lit up by noon the following day.

  But the Andersons were a quiet couple who had lived in Sausalito since 1970, raised two children, and were strict adherents to the school of minding your own business.

  Early on Tuesday, the Andersons were surprised to find Warren Bradley on their doorstep with a platter of cherry-fudge brownies.

  “Warren, this is so nice of you! Why the unexpected visit?” Clarice asked, as she welcomed him into their house.

  “Bea Snyder and I were talking about how helpful the two of you were in organizing those stacks of used books for the community garage sale last month, and I just thought it would be nice if I made you a batch of these yummy treats.”

  Oscar and Clarice said, nearly in unison, “Then you must stay and have a cup of tea or coffee with us.”

  Warren fussed, as though he didn’t want to put them to any bother, but it was an invitation to sit and chat for a while that he had hoped for. Hopefully, he thought as he entered their ancient living room, the Andersons were not in bed with their hearing aids off, missing the entire incident.

  Over tea, they tasted Warren’s creation. Both of the Andersons agreed that the brownies were absolutely delicious.

  Clarice asked, “Warren, would you be kind enough to share the recipe? They’re just divine!”

  Warren hesitated for a moment, as though he was sharing something of great value. “They’re an old family recipe…but alright, my dear. I’ll send you an email with it. But, please, keep it just between us.”

  Of course, this was all a charade. The recipe came out of a stack of old copies of Bon Appetit magazines that were housed in the storage room of the Sausalito Library.

  Niceties aside, Warren prodded them with a line he had dreamt up while standing over his stove, whipping up the chocolate sauce topping for his cherry-fudge brownies. “One thing I love about this part of Bulkley is how quiet it is up here.”

  “Well,” Oscar said, “Not quiet all the time.”

  “Why, Oscar, whatever do you mean by that?”

  Oscar and Clarice looked at each other, as if wondering who would speak first.

  Clarice decided to enter the void. “Sunday morning, past midnight if you can believe that, we had quite a bit of excitement up here! Oscar was asleep and I was sitting up trying to finish an old Agatha Christie Miss Marple murder mystery when I heard what sounded like shouting coming from next door.”

  “Oh my,” Warren said. “What was that all about?”

  “The Randolphs were having one helluva fight,” Oscar said. “We both got up and went to the window to see what was going on.”

  “A moment later, when I heard what I felt certain was Barbara Randolph’s scream,” Clarice said, “I immediately dialed 911.”

  Oscar and Clarice recounted the rest of what they saw that evening.

  “Grant Randolph in handcuffs, Barbara being wheeled out on a stretcher, it was all so shocking and so sad,” Clarice said.

  After a further exchange of pleasantries and mutually agreeing that “those two should get counseling so nothing like this ever happens again,” Warren left and walked quickly back to his car, trying not to dance for joy…fearing that the Andersons might be peering out through their curtains.

  His guess had paid off. He couldn’t wait to get to his laptop.

  Just hours before his final deadline, Bradley scrapped the part of his “Heard About Town” column admonishing littering tourists and surly teens, and substituted a new lead that practically wrote itself. It was of course, the Randolph story, under what Warren thought was an inspired headline: “Storm Warnings.”

  “The peace and tranquility of Bulkley Avenue, home to many of Sausalito’s best families, was suddenly shattered shortly after midnight Sunday morning by a violent argument between Grant and Barbara Randolph, as reported by their neighbors Clarice and Oscar Anderson.

  “Sausalito Police sources confirmed that the argument led to Mr. Randolph’s arrest and Mrs. Randolph being rushed to Marin General Hospital over concern that she had suffered life-threatening injuries.

  “Ethel Landau, longtime member of the Sausalito Arts Commission, a group which Mr. Randolph was recently made the chairman of, called the incident ‘shocking and disappointing.’ Adding, ‘In light of these developments, it’s perhaps time we reconsider Mr. Randolph’s participation.’

  “Neither Grant nor Barbara Randolph, who moved here from the often-dangerous streets of New York City, were available at press time for comment. Undoubtedly, we’ll have more on this story in the coming weeks.”

  Reading Warren’s column before press time, Rob, once again, was not pleased with what he read. But he knew that this kind of celebrity magazine salaciousness was catnip for many of his readers. Warren’s column, after all, was only read for the gossip.

  Nevertheless, Rob called Warren that afternoon to say, “I assume you’ve covered your back on this story, and double-checked all your facts.”

  “Absolutely, Rob!” Warren said with a proud air of confidence. I got the bare bone facts on Monday from one of the two police officers at the scene, Chris Harding, and then I visited the Grant’s neighbors the Andersons on Tuesday, who watched the entire thing from their bedroom window, saw Grant Randolph taken out in handcuffs, and Barbara Randolph wheeled out to an ambulance.”

  “I don’t think Grant Randolph will be coming to your next birthday party, but I assume you’re okay with that.”

  “That’s fine with me, Rob. I’d never invite the brute anyway.”

  After Warren hung up the phone, he sat back in his favorite chair. He enjoyed the sweet aroma of an apple cherry crisp that was cooking in the oven. He had kept his promise to Chief Petersen to not make his department the only source of information on the Randolph incident. Of course, there was an additional public record of the arrest. And if Barbara pressed charges, any subsequent trial would be in the public court records as well.

  But, as a local columnist, the essential ingredient was the commotion disturbing the peaceful night of their neighbors. The Andersons, awakened after midnight and horrified to see what was happening at the Randolphs, was that simple touch of communit
y that made the story work. Best of all, with a tight deadline, Warren accomplished all his goals in what was, for him, record time.

  He brewed a cup of tea, and sat down to enjoy that hot fruit crisp he had just created. The fall of the Randolphs, and his culinary creation that offered a perfect blend of sweet and tart tastes, made this a moment to savor.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Heard About Town,” was suddenly the talk of the town. Alma and the executive council of the Ladies of Liberty had nothing but praise for what she heralded as “Warren’s courageous, insightful, and powerful reporting.”

  Warren could hardly contain his joy. This was certainly a perfect week. He had inflicted real social damage to the Randolphs, and he had endeared himself to those he called all the right people.

  But his elation was mixed with some steps of caution. He made it a point not to drive or walk down Bulkley Avenue, attend a meeting of the Sausalito Arts Commission, or an open house at the Gate Six Artists’ Cooperative—all proof that, as he told himself repeatedly, “investigative journalism is not without a price.”

  “Are you at all concerned, Warren, that you have most likely enraged a very dangerous man?” Bea asked.

  “Reporting the facts is part of any journalist’s job; you have to take certain risks if you’re ever going to get the job done,” Warren proclaimed, as he pouted his lips forward and stood with an air of resolve worthy of General MacArthur.

  Three days before Warren’s column rocked Sausalito’s social scene, the Randolphs sat down together for the first time. It occurred before noon on Sunday, after Ray suggested to Barbara that he go up to the jail to bring Grant back home.

  Debbie, having returned from her Saturday overnight trip to Sonoma County, went to check on her friend, Barbara.

  Debbie winced when Barbara opened her front door and the mid-morning light caught the discoloration and swelling along her jaw line. Debbie put out her arms, and for a while, the two women hugged and held each other in silence.