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

by Martin Brown

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was Holly Cross’s task to do a final check of editorial and advertising for each week’s edition of the Standard.

  She called out to Rob, working in the room adjacent to hers, “We’ve got a hole on page fifteen! I don’t have this week’s ‘Heard About Town’ column.”

  At this point in the week, Rob was busy closing up one edition and starting on the next. He looked at his watch. Doing so brought to mind Warren’s message. “He phoned last night and left a message that he was going out, but would have it here by noon.”

  “Rob, it’s close to one. I’ve got to upload finished page layouts to the printer pretty soon if we’re going to make tomorrow morning’s mail drop.”

  “Okay, let me call him and see if he forgot to email it to us.”

  To his surprise, both Warren’s home number and cell number went to voice mail.

  “I can’t locate him,” Rob called out.

  Holly was at his doorstep. “Then how to you want me to fill the hole on fifteen?”

  “Shit, I don’t know! How about if we go with a best of ‘Heard About Town’ column?”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “Rob, there is no such thing.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny. Okay, give me a few minutes, and I’ll think of something.”

  While Rob’s mind raced through his options, it was not the first time he’d been required to make some last minute changes, his attention kept drifting back to that phone message Warren left. It wasn’t like him to miss a deadline. Particularly not when he called to say his column was nearly done, but he wanted to add some finishing touches.

  Rob’s relationship with Warren was relatively insignificant—no more than an occasional phone call to discuss the column, something that Rob did regularly with others in his corps of community reporters scattered around Marin.

  His only reason for paying more attention to Warren and what he wrote on a weekly basis was the fact that he was clearly one of Sausalito’s more colorful characters. And, more importantly, his columns of the last two weeks had everyone talking about what was coming next, which is the kind of buzz any newspaper publisher loves to hear.

  Over the past week, every time he’d heard Warren referred to as the “gossiping gourmet,” he smiled to himself. Since the turn of the last century, when William Randolph Hearst was told by Sausalito’s ladies and gentlemen to take himself, his mistress, and his money to another part of California, this had been a town where people enjoyed judging the private lives of others.

  Paradoxically, Sausalito relished its colorful characters and any chance for gossip about their lives. Case in point, the1960s election of San Francisco’s renowned, albeit retired madam, Sally Stanford—as town mayor. Rob loved the caricature hanging in city hall showing Stanford smoking a cigarette as she conducted a city council meeting, sitting majestically under a sign that read, “No Smoking Allowed.”

  When Rob purchased the Standard, in the years before he added other weekly editions to his workload, he paid more attention to the cat fighting and back-biting that moved the town forward from one social season to the next. Rob was enough of a businessman to realize that Warren’s column was good for readership. One half of the town loved him and wanted to know what he was thinking, and the other half disliked him, but couldn’t resist finding out what he had to say. The best of all possible worlds.

  Later that day, with his weekly Sausalito edition at the printers, and no word yet from Bradley, Rob could not resist his curiosity to find out what had happened. Like most kids who grew up in Sausalito, Rob knew every avenue, road, street lane, cul de sac, and hillside stairway in the small town.

  Rob had never gone up to Warren’s house, but he now discovered that it was the very last address on Prospect Avenue, a rather lonely road, which depending on the season, could appear bright and benign or dark and menacing. The heavy rains that, in some years, came in December and lasted through March could give the homes in this part of Sausalito a bedraggled look. The storms roll up and over the Marin Headlands and descend on the southern end of Sausalito, known to locals as “hurricane gulch.”

  To the uninformed eye, homes like Warren’s cottage may have appeared to be precariously perched upon one of the town’s steep hillsides in earthquake country. But, in truth, nearly all of Sausalito sat on bedrock. The real threat to a home like his came, not in the form of earthquakes, but mudslides during a rainy season of unusual ferocity.

  Rob had known the previous owner, Mrs. Danvers. She was his fifth grade teacher at Bayside Elementary. None of the children ever met Mr. Danvers. What little they could pick up by badgering their parents was that Mr. Danvers had died many years earlier of what was quietly referred to as a “bad heart.” Based on this, it was Rob’s classmate Eddie Austin’s contention that Mrs. Danvers quite likely had killed Mr. Danvers and disposed of his body late one night in the canyon brush below their house.

  Unlike Rob, who was an A-student, Eddie invariably brought home C’s. But his endless speculation on the demise of Mr. Danvers might have indicated a detective inspector in the making.

  As Rob pulled his aging Jeep Wrangler next to Warren’s ancient Toyota Corolla, the wooden deck that served as the home’s car park—really, an aging tangle of metal supports bolted precariously to the steep hill below—groaned loudly. It was just past seven in the early evening. The headlands, on the west side of the property, loomed so high over it that the cottage had undoubtedly been consumed in dark shadows for the last few hours.

  It was all but impossible to tell where the parking deck ended and the cottage began. Actually, the home had a separate system of supports that allowed it to cling to the hillside, although it appeared as though the house was sitting atop the same structure. If Rob stepped to his left, he could have walked around to the cottage’s small back porch entrance. But, of course, the proper thing to do was to turn right and walk over the crumbling walkway to the home’s front door.

  For a small house, its doorbell was befitting of a British country estate. He waited a moment, but no Warren.

  In a house this size, Rob thought, these chimes could wake the dead.

  It appeared that the lights were out. He waited a couple of minutes, but no one came to the door.

  Rob was back at his car and about to pull open the door, when it occurred to him that if Warren was out, he would most likely have taken his car. The mystery deepened and Rob pondered for a few moments whether he wanted to snoop around the back of the cottage or head home.

  “What the hell?” Rob thought, “I’ve come this far. This time, as he stepped back over the creaking old deck, he moved to his left with a certain sense of dread that he did not understand. Then, he stopped suddenly as an icy chill went down the center of his back.

  At the far end of the house, there was a porch swing, perfectly positioned for sipping a morning cup of coffee while enjoying a dramatic sunrise over the East Bay. Sitting on the right side of the swing was Warren, dressed in a tweed jacket, and slumped just slightly against the swing’s armrest.

  There’s little that a newsman doesn’t see if he’s been in the business for a decade or more, but in sleepy Sausalito and its surrounding towns, the deceased have most often been tagged, bagged, and sent off to the morgue before a reporter has arrived.

  This was not one of those times.

  Functioning on a blend of determined compulsion and uneasy revulsion, Rob approached what he logically assumed was the body of Warren Bradley.

  The face was not ashen, but it did have an almost wax-like patina to it. He wore a white shirt. The two top buttons were open, revealing a rather dapper looking gold ascot around his neck. Because of Warren’s tweed jacket and black slacks, Rob assumed that the dead man must have requested the delay in filing his column because he had a date.

  Rob imagined that Warren most likely nodded off and died peacefully in his sleep sometime later that night, after Warren’s friend went home.

  He must have come out
on the porch for a breath of fresh air, Rob thought, perhaps to recover from one too many glasses of wine.

  Warren’s hands were shoved down into the pockets of his jacket, obviously to keep him warm on what was likely a chilly night in the surrounding canyon.

  Dazed by his discovery, Rob walked back to his car and reached for his cell. Others in a panic might have called 911, but Rob had stored in his contacts the non-emergency numbers for the Sausalito Police and Fire/Rescue service. In a town with steep hills and blind curves, it would take a few minutes for both the squad car and the fire department’s Emergency Medical Team to arrive, and it was clear that there was no need to rush.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Only moments after he slipped the cell phone back into his pocket, Rob could hear the sirens echoing through Sausalito as they began their journey from the flats into the hills. There was, of course, no real cause for the sound and light show; Warren, Rob reasoned, had likely been dead for quite some time.

  But any chance to shake up an otherwise sleepy town and remind taxpayers that their emergency service workers were earning their salaries was far too tempting to resist. The cacophony of howling dogs set off by the high-pitched noise only added to the community’s sense of excitement.

  In less than a minute, half of the town was staring out windows to see what the fuss was about. Two minutes later, the sirens whined to a halt in front of Warren’s cottage, but the emerging officers all left their lights flashing. As Officer Hansen explained, “The different colored lights create a really cool effect off all the trees.”

  Rob greeted Chief Petersen, Officer Hansen, and the fire rescue squad with handshakes all around. There was a restrained professional posture Rob and Petersen struck whenever in each other’s presence.

  Petersen had the ridiculous habit of walking as though he was in an old John Wayne western. “How’d you come to find the body?” he asked.

  “Warren’s weekly column was due at the paper no later than noon today. Last night, he called and left a message, assuring us that he’d have it in before then. I’ve been trying his home line and his cell all afternoon. After I put the paper to bed, I thought I’d drive up here before heading home, you know, just to check on him. I found him out here on the back deck’s porch swing.”

  Petersen sauntered over to where Warren looked like he was comfortably enjoying the early evening lights that, by now, had popped on all over the bowl-shaped canyon.

  “Well, look at that! Give him a glass of Chardonnay and a plate of that dilled salmon he liked to make, and everyone would think he was just out here enjoying the fresh air,” Petersen said, as he circled the swing slowly and thoughtfully.

  Dumbass, Rob thought.

  “I guess he won’t be bringing us any more of those great gourmet luncheons,” Hansen said, while studying Warren’s face. It seemed grayer than it had appeared to Rob when he first arrived, but perhaps that was just the changing light.

  “How come he never brought us any lunches? All we got was those damn pancakes for our benefit breakfast once a year,” emergency rescue officer Dave Nichols exclaimed.

  “Because you couldn’t tell him what was going on around town,” Hansen sneered. “Grease fires and heart failures don’t make for good gossip.”

  “Okay, knock off the bullshit, boys,” Petersen barked, aware that Rob was watching everything they said and did. Rob already had a poor enough view of their job performance. No reason to reinforce that impression.

  “What now?” Rob asked, with a thought to going home. Although sitting down to dinner was the furthest thing from his mind at the moment.

  Petersen shrugged. “Given the fact that the body is colder than Hansen’s wife on their wedding night, I think it’s time we get a call into the county coroner.”

  Hansen went back to his squad car to call dispatch. A few minutes later, he walked back to the group, shaking his head. “Shit! There’s been a crash up in Novato on 101—two fatalities. The coroner is up there now. Dispatch up at county requested that we take the body up to the morgue, since there’s no reason to think we’re dealing with anything other than natural causes.”

  “Okay, boys, Nichols said to the three other members of his emergency rescue team, let’s get the body on a stretcher and roll it on out of here.”

  “Beats baggin’ and taggin’, which is what you get when the coroner’s people show up,” Petersen said quietly to Rob, giving him a pat on the shoulder. Rob smiled to himself. For all Petersen knows, Warren and I were longtime friends and colleagues, he thought. Assuming the same as Petersen—that Rob viewed Warren as a fallen comrade, Nichols wanted to remove the body in the most respectful way possible. He came up behind Warren and slid his hands under Bradley’s armpits and linked them together in the center of his chest as delicately as possible.

  “Grab both his feet,” he directed one of his crew. “We’re going to lift him up and over the back of the swing.” He turned to Petersen and Hansen. “I’m going to need you guys to back us up. Get on either side of the body and bring the swing forward while Hal and I lift him up and out. Depending on how long he’s been out here—I’m guessing he’s been here for nearly a full day—the amount of rigor mortis that has set in won’t make this any easier.”

  Rob’s throat tightened as he wondered just how gruesome this was going to be. His feet were ready to walk away, but his mind told him he had to stay. He was no inner city crime beat reporter, but he didn’t want to look like the editor of their once-monthly gardening page either.

  Just a couple of steps behind the swing, the stretcher was set up—flat, and in a lifted and locked position; Nichols took a deep breath and gave a pull. Warren was no more than five nine and probably one hundred and sixty pounds, but a body that’s been sitting for that long is not easy for anyone to lift.

  After a couple of tries, Nichols and his partner, Hal Michaels, decided on plan B.

  “Bring the stretcher to the front of the swing, and we’ll move the body forward. At least that way, gravity will be on our side,” Nichols declared confidently.

  It was easier, particularly when they decided not to be overly concerned that the body would take a couple of bangs between sliding off the swing and onto the stretcher.

  When his body missed the stretcher and hit the floor, both of Warren’s arms came free of the tweed jacket’s pockets. But with rigor mortis having set in, his arms stayed by his side. Nichols, Michaels and their fellow EMT officers were too busy steadying the body on the stretcher and preparing to strap it down to notice the curious sight that made Chief Petersen say out loud, “What the hell?”

  Petersen pulled the flashlight out of Steve Hansen’s equipment belt while he was in the middle of rhapsodizing over his two favorite Warren Bradley dishes to Rob. He turned to see what had gotten his boss’s attention.

  The flashlight’s bright light was aimed squarely at the bottom of Warren’s right sleeve. It hung there, several inches below Warren’s arm, as if he were a child in an oversized adult’s coat.

  Now that Petersen had everyone’s attention, he walked around the stretcher. When he was on Warren’s left side, he moved the flashlight up to look inside the other jacket sleeve.

  “Okay, everyone freeze,” Petersen declared. “We’re standing in the middle of a murder scene. I’m certain that we’ve already contaminated the scene, so let’s just step away from the body and give this a little thought.”

  “What are you talking about, Chief?” Nichols asked.

  “Well, let me put it to you simply…when people die of natural causes, they get to keep both their hands. Mr. Bradley seems to have lost his.”

  He pushed up the jacket’s sleeves.

  Petersen was right. Both of Warren’s hands were missing.

  Over the next few hours, all the usual things that happen at a crime scene occurred.

  A body that had been cleared by the coroner’s office to be removed to the morgue was held at the scene, and not released until nearly mi
dnight. While the thought briefly occurred to Petersen to put the body back on the porch swing as close to the pose it was in when they arrived on the scene as possible, that was obviously ridiculous, considering Rob was standing there watching their every move.

  “Why me, God?” Petersen asked himself. His retirement was scheduled for October, just five months away.

  More Sausalito police cars arrived, as well as two from the sheriff’s department. One carried inspector Eddie Austin.

  Finally, after eleven, the coroner arrived. Again and again, Petersen, exhausted by now, explained how the missing hands had gone unnoticed until the body was moved onto the stretcher. Each time he told it, his story was greeted with a shake of the head and a look of disgust.

  Just before midnight, Bradley’s body was finally on its way to the morgue, and his small cottage was wrapped with enough yellow CRIME SCENE tape to look like it was waiting for a new CSI episode to begin production.

  In the deep brush well below Bradley’s home, a coyote wandering through the canyon came upon the missing hands, attracted by the subtle scent of sausage and porcini ragu with just a hint of a mixed fruit cobbler. The lean ravenous animal devoured all but a few spare scraps of evidence that the Medical Examiner’s office would have loved to have had.

  Those spare bits of flesh and bone, all that was left of the two talented hands that had created countless culinary wonders, were carried off at daybreak by a vulture patrolling the hills of Sausalito, searching for unexpected treasures.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Rob and Karin had slept only four hours, having stayed up late discussing the bizarre details of Warren Bradley’s death.

  In the hope that the fresh air might awaken his tired mind, Rob walked down to his office on Princess Street. As he unlocked his office door, he steeled himself for what he knew would be a long few days. It was Wednesday, and while The Sausalito Standard would arrive in homes in a few hours, what would be missing was the week’s—make that the year’s—biggest story.