The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (13 page)

Having an endless calendar of
special events to which Warren would bring a prepared dish, what he actually
enjoyed most was using his cooking skills on those rare occasions when he
entertained at his small hillside cottage.

This particular evening was
one Warren had been anticipating for the last two weeks. It presented the
opportunity to prepare one of his long-standing favorite dishes: pasta with
veal, sausage and porcini ragu. What a welcome change from all this commotion
regarding Randolph and his unpleasant encounters with both him, and his most
likely mob-connected pal, Ray Sirica! 

Soon after Warren arrived in
town, he befriended a childless widow named Danvers. He cooked for her, did her
shopping, and took her to doctor’s appointments.

Shortly after she died in her
sleep one winter night, Warren moved into the Danvers home. At the time, that
raised a few eyebrows among the silver-haired set, but it seemed like a
reasonable exchange. For many years, he had cared for her, and, if the rumor
was true, at one point he had been her “younger lover.” They had a documented
agreement, supposedly memorialized by one of the county’s many estate
attorneys, specifying the transfer of the property deed to Warren at the time
of her death.

Although the home was small
compared to the estates of Sausalito’s landed gentry, Warren was perfectly
happy there. Having turned fifty six the year he moved in, and with no plans to
ever start a family, the Danvers’ cottage met his three greatest expectations:
an adequate kitchen, a wonderful bay view, and a home up on the hill, which, in
terms of Sausalito society, meant he had arrived.

So engrossed was he in the
preparation of his favorite sauce that he completely forgot that this was also
the evening his weekly column, “Heard About Town,” was due. 

Now that it had finally
crossed his mind, he knew there was no hope of his completing the column and
also having his meal prepared in time for his special guest. Warren reached for
the phone and called Rob, whom he rightly assumed had left his office for the
evening. 

"Hello, Rob," he
began, making certain his message had an air of relaxed assurance. My column
for this week is nearly done, but I just want to polish it a bit more and I
have to go out for the evening. I'll have it for you by noon tomorrow. It’s an
important column, and I think you'll like what I've done.”

Most of the message was an
utter fabrication. In fact, Warren had no idea what he was going to write
about, meaning this column’s approximate length of seven hundred and fifty
words would be even more painful than usual. But, as he lovingly sautéed the
veal in a wine sauce until it browned, his mind wandered over a range of
possible topics.

Alma, Bea, and Robin had told
him repeatedly that he needed to keep the heat on Randolph, but the entire
episode was placing him in the middle of a dispute that he found increasingly
uncomfortable.

While he busied himself
slicing onions, carrots, and tomatoes, it occurred to him that perhaps in this
week’s column he could declare that the moment had arrived for members of the Sausalito's
Fine Arts Commission to take a stand on the subject of violence against
women. Once he settled on this topic, the entire column began to write
itself.

Warren, a master chef in the
nasty business of scheming, knew full well that Sirica was attempting to
entangle him in his own web of gossip. The only way to extradite himself from
that was to elevate the issue beyond one domestic dispute. As he reminded
himself, and intended to remind his readers, the core facts of this story were
not his creation. The police had been called! The peace had been disturbed! And
when it was over, a citizen of Sausalito who held a distinguished position in
the community was on his way to the county jail! What part of any of this was
acceptable behavior in a civilized society?

Warren’s thoughts and
indignation for that loathsome man Randolph were rapidly rising to a boil.
There was no doubt that the muse was present in him at that very moment. At the
very least, he had to put his thoughts into a Word file. Were he to wait until
tomorrow, the heat of his message might dissipate in the afterglow of a
delicious meal, topped off with a bottle or two of that Consorzio Chianti
Rufina that he had been saving for a special occasion.

Warren looked at the
oversized clock that hung on the wood-paneled kitchen wall. His guest was due
to arrive a little after seven, but it was just a few minutes past six. He
lifted the lid of each pot to do one more quick check, and he filled a large
pot slightly more than halfway with the water he would use to cook his pasta.
Then, he put a low flame below it, so it would begin to warm. Warren,
still-inspired stepped into his small cluttered bedroom and sat down at his
desk in a tiny alcove. He opened his aging off-brand laptop and began to state
his case for the removal of Grant from high office:

Much has been said in the
past two weeks about the disappointing behavior of Fine Arts Commission
Chairman Grant Randolph. His arrest by police, on suspicion of spousal abuse,
has no doubt shocked many in our quiet 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 was brought, handcuffed, to county
jail, facing possible charges of assault and battery! 

Readers of this column know
how stridently I have argued for a return to the standards of proper conduct. I
have no doubt that the majority of Sausalito’s citizens would agree with me
that, whatever the final disposition of these charges, Mr. Randolph’s conduct
falls far short of what any one of us would call civil behavior. 

What is perhaps most
troubling is how Mr. Randolph’s behavior reflects poorly on our city’s Fine Arts
Commission, an august group that has been entrusted since it’s founding in 1972
with keeping the flame of art appreciation burning bright. Each year, we
celebrate this tradition of excellence with a gala that salutes the artists who
have made Sausalito their home and the patrons that support their endeavors.

Mr. Randolph’s serving as
chair—let alone a member of the commission—sends the wrong message to both the
arts community and to our citizenry. The time has arrived for commission
members and Sausalito citizens who value the dignity of each and every
individual to rise up and expel this viper from our midst.

He saved the column, attached
it to an email, and was about to click send when a thought occurred to him:
hadn't he just left a message for Rob Timmons advising him that this week’s
column would arrive no latter than noon tomorrow?

It would appear odd to submit
a completed article to him sixty minutes later, particularly after making the
claim that he was heading out for the evening. Plus, while he thought he had
created a powerful and undoubtedly well-written piece, things might look
different to him in the morning. After all, “expel this viper from our midst,”
was perhaps a bit strident. It was not like Warren to put himself directly in
the line of fire, and there would no doubt be those who took issue with his
piece.

“One more read tomorrow
morning, and off it goes,” he finally decided. Now, it was time for more
important things—open that bottle of Chianti Rufina, check the ragu, get that
pasta cooking, and prepare for what he hoped would be a lovely evening.

No sooner had he savored that
first careful sip of the expensive Chianti than the doorbell rang. Warren
glanced in surprise at the kitchen clock. It was only six forty-five. His guest
was early, but perhaps he had gotten the time wrong by thirty minutes. Warren
took a quick desperate look in the mirror. He brushed his hair back, silently
regretted his aging face, and went to open the door.

To his surprise—and
discomfort—he found himself staring into the stern looking features of Ray
Sirica.

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.