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

by Martin Brown

  “Whoa! That’s Randolph’s pal—the one who wrote that great letter to the Standard a couple of weeks ago complaining about Bradley. I loved it when he called Bradley, ‘the gossiping gourmet.’ It certainly gave Holly and me a good laugh.”

  “That’s the one,” Eddie said, trying hard to hold back his own laugh. “I can only imagine the drama that would have continued to cause if Bradley had not been dispatched to that great culinary institute in the sky.”

  “So, who spotted Ray Sirica?”

  “Around six-thirty on Monday night, one of Bradley’s neighbors was walking his dog. He recognized Ray as he drove past, and followed the car down to the end of Prospect as it pulled onto Bradley’s deck.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “I rang all the neighbors’ doorbells, checking to see if I might get lucky. You never know when someone sees something that they think is nothing, but it turns out to be something…or they just don’t want to get involved, particularly in a murder investigation.”

  “You think it might be a break in the case?” Rob asked eagerly.

  “No, newsboy,” Eddie said, using one of his pet names for Rob. “But it’s something. When you don’t have much, you’re happy to follow any scrap of information that comes your way.”

  “Did Sirica come forward to the police?”

  “No. I went looking for him. I interviewed him Wednesday afternoon at his home. He seemed a little uneasy. I can see why. He goes up to plead with Bradley, as he explained, to ‘back off his pal,’ and the next thing you know, the guy is found murdered.”

  “Could Sirica have done it?”

  “The timing is off. A neighbor who was putting out the trash around nine that night saw the lights on at Bradley’s place. A door or window must have been open, because he’s pretty certain he heard voices and the sound of Bradley laughing. One more reason—Sirica’s story holds up that he spoke to Warren for ten minutes, got nowhere, and then went back home.”

  “Does Sirica suspect Randolph?”

  “He didn’t say, but by the way he winced, I think it’s pretty likely. Then again, half the pinheads in town think that Randolph killed Bradley, particularly after that public confrontation they had at opening night of opera in the park.”

  “Trust me, if Karin and I knew that was going to happen, we would have gone in spite of the music.”

  “You and me both, Rob.”

  “What else?” Rob asked, with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

  “Right now I—and our friends at the Sausalito PD at the other end of Caledonia Street—have no more than that. It’s not all that surprising. Bradley’s house is at the very end of a poorly lit road, and the sight lines are lousy.” Eddie leaned in. “There was one other thing. The ME suspects that death was suffocation, and that the old boy never knew what hit him. Often, when a person has a pillow held over their face, there will be signs of a struggle…bruising to the victim’s cheeks and mouth, perhaps a broken nose. Most commonly, skin and hair of the killer under the victim’s fingernails—evidence we obviously don’t have, as you know. And his face doesn’t show any bruising, which means Bradley was sound asleep, drunk, or likely both.

  “What will you do about Randolph?”

  “For now, I’ll just keep an eye on him. In the old west, a dispute like his with Bradley might have ended in a gunfight. Today, it ends when both parties tire of exchanging pointed barbs.”

  Rob was still hoping for something he could go with for his coverage of Bradley’s slaying. In an effort to loosen Eddie’s tongue perhaps just a little more, he offered, “Let me get you another beer.”

  Eddie happily agreed.

  When two more beers were delivered, Rob toasted to “Murder most foul.”

  Eddie laughed “You can say that again. Minus the victim’s hands, these aren’t usual circumstances we’re dealing with. No facial wounds or contusions, that’s pretty surprising. But there was still enough of an elevated blood alcohol level in Warren’s body to indicate that he had been drinking before his death. However, the two empty bottles of Chianti on the kitchen counter pretty much told us that.” Eddie took a swig of his beer. “It’s possible that the suffocation was forceful enough and the victim was in a deep enough sleep, possibly alcohol related, that it was all over pretty quickly. Let’s put it this way, if Warren did become aware he was being suffocated, it was most likely in the very last moments of his life.”

  “Could there have been any fibers of the bedding inside his mouth or nostrils?” Rob asked.

  “A swab for fibers inside the nose or mouth is pretty inconclusive. Most mornings, all of us have a fair number of fibers on our lips, noses and mouths—from our bedding.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that every road leads to a dead end?” Rob asked.

  “Not at all. But in the absence of the kind of physical evidence that would make it an easier crime to solve, a good investigator has to start constructing scenarios based on plausible theories.”

  “Are you boys discussing murder without me?”

  Both Eddie and Rob turned around to find Holly Cross standing behind them. She was holding her usual drink—a martini.

  “Since when do you come to Smitty’s this early in the evening?” Rob asked.

  “Not very often,” Holly admitted. “But I know you two have this little standing date every Friday after work, so I thought I’d drop in. Room for one more?” Instead of waiting for an invitation, she grabbed a chair from the table behind her and sat down.

  “What is it with you and murder?” Rob asked.

  “Look, I’ve read Sue Grafton from A to Z! Maybe I’ll have something to contribute here.” She took a dainty sip—followed by a less dainty gulp—then leaned in conspiratorially. “So, are you closing the circle, tightening the noose, ready to check the killer into the gray bar hotel?”

  “Who do you think you are—Sausalito’s answer to Nancy Drew?” Eddie asked.

  “Nah. I’m just a girl hoping to enjoy a cocktail with a side of murder. So come on Eddie, spill! Poor Warren’s soul is calling out for justice.”

  “I told you both on Wednesday that this one’s not going to be a slam dunk. But 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 just not there.”

  “Goody.” Having reached the end of her martini, Holly waved at the waitress, while pointing to her empty glass.

  “Hangar 1 vodka, two olives and one onion,” Holly called out.

  The waitress rolled her eyes. “I know, Holly, I know!”

  “Sounds like you’re a regular,” Eddie said teasingly.

  “I’ve been here once or twice before.”

  The proof was in how quickly her drink appeared. “Here you go, doll, just the way you like it,” murmured the waitress, as she put down the fresh martini in front of her.

  Rob and Eddie exchanged knowing glances.

  Holly shrugged. “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 approximately half of Sausalito’s population did not commit this crime.”

  That brought a shared snort from both Rob and Holly.

  “Let’s keep the obvious front and center. In life, Warren was around a hundred and sixty pounds, and about five-foot, nine. Dead bodies that size need a big, pretty strong guy to move them around. And from the point that Bradley was suffocated and laid out on the floor, 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 finge
r back and forth. “And then dressed Bradley, or at least cleaned him up, carried him outside, then placed and posed him on the back porch swing…that’s likely 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.”

  Rob was about to ask, but Holly, who was perched at the edge of her chair, beat him to it. “So, knowing that, where do you go from here?”

  “It’s likely to be a long slog, but we’re going to have to dig a lot deeper into Bradley’s life and learn more about everyone he knew. Remember: the one saving grace in the business of murder investigations is that nearly every victim knew their killer.” Deep in thought, Eddie folded his cocktail napkin in half. “We have no evidence of a break in, and the place wasn’t tossed. In fact, while he didn’t own much outside of all his pots and high-end cooking utensils, none of his valuable possessions appear to be missing. His wallet was in his top drawer with one-hundred and twenty dollars inside. And there was an old but rather pricey watch sitting next to it.”

  “Nothing was taken? How about his hands?” Holly chirped.

  “Yes, the hands,” Eddie said. He looked as if he was about to say something, but stopped.

  The silence sat heavy between them.

  Rob and Holly looked at each other, then asked in unison: “And the hands?”

  Eddie shrugged. “It may have just been a diversion.”

  “Or maybe,” Rob said slowly, “It was a statement or a warning.”

  “Warning?” Holly asked. “About what?”

  He shook his head. “Who the hell knows?”

  “As long as I have you master sleuths here, I want to bring something up.” Eddie leaned 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 now, given that people keep so much information on their computers. We would have looked at his smart phone, too, if he had one, to check his calendar. We were hoping he kept a calendar on his computer. The program was there, but he never used it. His cell phone had no numbers, either going in or out, that we could identify—except for two. Both were received from pay phones in Sausalito. We got his home phone’s records as well. All the numbers in and out were identified and cleared. You guys wouldn’t believe how many of the calls went back and forth between Alma Samuels and Bradley, not to mention some of the others in her clique—Bea Snyder, Robin Mitchell, the usual suspects.”

  “It was pretty obvious that he was their errand boy,” Holly said with a giggle.

  “What about those pay phone calls to his cell?” Rob asked.

  “One was from the tiny grocery on Caledonia Street. The other came from the Bridgeway Café. You both know, I assume, that there are only a handful of those old pay phones left anywhere in town. It’s merely guesswork at this time, but I think there’s a reasonable chance that the killer made both of the calls. One of them was made to Warren’s cell early on the afternoon he was killed. The other was made a couple of weeks earlier.”

  “That’s pretty interesting,” Holly said, as she pulled her chair even closer.

  “Warren had planned a dinner for two. The killer made no attempt to remove the evidence of that. The dishes had all been washed and put in the drainer, but unless he used two wine glasses, two dishes, two forks and so on, Warren was not alone for his last supper. Not to mention the voices that the neighbor heard around nine that night.”

  “Does it add up to anything?” Rob asked, still desperately hoping for a story angle.

  “Not yet, Rob. But it helps us in the construction of some interesting theories, the biggest of which is that the killer was probably not an amateur—and at the very least, no dummy, either. Murders that are the result of, say, an argument, would never be as methodical as this. Crimes of passion generally 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 his phone records would be one of the first things the cops did.”

  “Maybe the killer’s cell wasn’t working. If so, a pay phone was the only alternative,” Holly suggested.

  “Sure, that’s always possible. But it would be a lot more credible if the other call from a pay phone wasn’t made two weeks earlier. Most phones today can go months, or even years, without receiving a pay phone call. Bradley got two in two weeks—and one of those calls just hours before he was killed.”

  “Why would that matter?” Rob asked.

  “We continue to believe that Warren knew his killer. Since both pay phone calls originated in Sausalito, the killer probably lives or works in or near Sausalito.”

  “This is all sheer speculation,” Holly said, looking disappointedly at her now-empty martini.

  “Absolutely. I call it theory development. Then again, unless you have a killer who staples a business card to the victim’s sleeve, in the absence of actionable evidence, like prints, tissue samples under a victim’s fingernails, and so on, educated guesswork is where you have to begin.”

  “And 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 certain that he’d have it to you well before the next day’s noon deadline? Well, here it is,” Eddie said, as he pulled a folded printed sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket.

  Rob’s eyes widened as he opened the gossiping gourmet’s very last “Heard About Town” column.

  Holly, who said, “Holy shit! I’ve got to see this!” jumped up and ran behind Rob to look over his shoulder.

  Both of them read the column in silent amazement:

  “Much has been said in the past two weeks about the disappointing behavior of Fine Arts Commission Chairman-Elect Grant Randolph. His arrest by police on suspicion of spousal abuse has no doubt shocked many in our quiet and tight-knit community. While it now appears clear that Mrs. Randolph has decided not to pursue the matter, it is nonetheless shocking, and greatly discomforting, that an individual holding an important position in our fair city's cultural life has been brought handcuffed to county jail, facing possible charges of assault and battery…”

  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 his fellow art commissioners who, “value the dignity of each and every individual, to rise up and expel this viper from our midst!”

  As usual, it was Holly who 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.

  “Six-thirty-nine on the night he was killed,” Eddie answered.

  “So, maybe he called Randolph for comment, and he came up to the house and killed him,” Holly suggested, and then added, “Have you ever seen that guy? He’s jacked! If they lock him up and throw away the key, I wouldn’t mind being his cellmate.”

  “Not so fast, Miss Drew,” Eddie said. “It’s pretty unlikely that Randolph shared dinner and two bottles of wine with Bradley before cutting off the hands that had used a keyboard to torment him.”

  Holly, who by now was two martinis into her evening and feeling no pain, picked up her bag and said to 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. She fits in perfectly with all the other wing nuts in this town.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Alma rarely called Rob. In truth, they both knew she did everything she could to pretend he and the Standard did not exist.

  All the more reason for his shock when he picked up his telephone and found Alma at the other end of the line.

  “Poor dear Warren’s memorial service is at ten o’clock sharp, Saturday morning,” she said, without even so much as a how are you let alone a good morning. “I know how much he meant
to you—or I should say, to the Standard,” she said knowingly. “Heavens! If not for his column, I presume there would be no reason at all for the paper to exist! That being said, I presume you’ll want to give a eulogy at his memorial service.”

  Rob’s first instinct was to reply in an Eastern European accent, “You must got wrong number,” and hang up. He winced at the thought of attending a Ladies of Liberty farewell to their dearly departed, but he knew that there was no graceful way for him to turn down the invitation. Besides, this was a rare opportunity to prove to his detractors that he was a responsible and established voice of reason for what was often a discordant community.

  Saturday was his one morning to sleep in—his usual weekly gift to himself—but he knew it would needlessly offend the Ladies of Liberty if he declined the offer.

  “Yes, that would be fine. I’ll see you—”

  She hung up even before he completed his goodbye.

  Friday night after dinner, Rob hastily put his comments regarding the late columnist down on paper, then read them to Karin as she washed and dried the dishes.

  “Whatever you want to say is fine, dear,” Karin said, only half paying attention to Rob’s carefully crafted remembrance. “Honestly, Rob, the guy always gave me the creeps, the way he went around getting into everybody’s business…exchanging pot roasts and fruit cobblers—for gossip! You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if he knew a little too much for his own good.”

  Later on, when they had both gotten into bed, Karin turned to him and said, “Hey, maybe that’s why the killer chopped off his hands! Maybe it was a warning to others to be careful about the things they write.”

  “Eddie and I talked about that. Of course, Eddie thinks if that was the case, I might be the next one to get the axe.”

  They both shared a good laugh, but as they turned out their nightlights, they wondered if they had indeed locked 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 tantalizing enough to keep Rob awake well past midnight.