The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (14 page)

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 midnight. 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.

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.

“Damn it,” Rob mumbled
repeatedly to himself, oblivious to the lovely May morning that surrounded him.
Among other things, Bradley’s killer was certainly guilty of lousy timing. Rob
knew well that this was the curse of the weekly news outlet, particularly in an
age of instant communication. Just like any endeavor, luck and timing play a
large role.

Having been the person who
discovered Bradley’s body, this simple reality was particularly difficult.
The
Sausalito Standard
’s lead story this week was: “Parks and Recreation
Commission Reviews Plans for Proposed Dunphy Park Playground.”

Not nearly as dramatic as: “
Sausalito
Standard
Columnist Warren Bradley Brutally Murdered.”

Still, Rob knew he had to
focus on getting out the rest of the
Standard’s
weekly local editions.
At the same time, he couldn’t help but wonder when the county’s daily newspaper
would send a reporter to cover Bradley’s murder.

Naturally, there was the
paper’s online home page, but Rob used it sparingly, knowing that he did not
have the budget to compete with the websites of major Bay Area newspapers,
principally,
The Marin Independent Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The
Oakland Tribune,
and
The San Jose Mercury
. When a big story hit the
day your weekly landed in-home, you had to wait seven days to have your full
say.

Rob also knew, however, that
there was one very important silver lining; the dailies, and the chatter birds
of the local TV and radio news broadcasts, no doubt would be all over the story
for the next twenty-four hours. After that, there would be another sensational
story to cover—say, a body found floating in the bay, or a politician found
with someone else’s spouse, money, or both…a bank robbery and much more. That
pack of news hounds have been well trained to always chase the scent of the
new, new story of the day.

For next week’s edition of
the
Standard
, he’d be the one and only reporter covering the Bradley
murder investigation—

And that would hold his
readers’ attention.

In fact, depending on how the
investigation and the story unfolded, Bradley’s slaying could be the
Standard
’s top story for weeks to come.

Coverage of new streetlights
in the downtown tourist district and new water-saving low-flush toilets being
installed in all city facilities would just have to take a back seat to the
Bradley investigation.

When Rob dragged his tired
body and frazzled mind up the long narrow steps to his offices, Holly was
waiting breathlessly for him.

“I called Karin. She told me
you were already on your way down here. I tried your cell, but you didn’t pick
up. Karin told me you were there—and that you saw the body! How cool is that?
Pretty gruesome, huh?”

“Who told you about Bradley?”

“One of my neighbors. I ran
into her as I was leaving for work. She’d heard it from two cops on Bridgeway.
She passes them every morning on their way down to Café Divino for their
morning lattes and bagels.” Holly’s brown eyes were twinkling, and her short
black curly hair bounced up and down as she talked. She was as excited as a kid
on Christmas morning.

Rob knew she was never a fan
of Warren’s—and in fact, every time she said his name, she prefaced it by
calling him “that mean, sneaky little man.” Nor was she a fan of his column.
But to Holly and Rob—and most likely to other Sausalito lifers as well—the
circumstances surrounding Warren’s death had turned the gossiping gourmet into
a local rock star. 

One of the
Standard
’s
two phone lines began to ring. Two seconds later, the other started. Rob’s cell
phone started to vibrate, and then Holly’s went off as well.

“It really is going to be a
long day, huh?” she said.

In that first hour of phone
calls, most of which Rob used as an excuse to end at least one call before
taking the next, the one voice he was happy to hear was that of Eddie Austin.

“So you’ve been assigned to
the case?”

“Duh, yeah.”

“Can you stop up at the
office?”

“Yep. In fact, I’m two
minutes away. I’ve got a few questions for you. Right now, you’re my number one
suspect.”

“
Me
?”

“Sure, buddy! You had motive
and opportunity. Bradley wrote a lousy column and you wanted to get rid of him.
Happens all the time in your business. You dirty rat!”

“Very funny, asshole.”

“Chillax! It’s just a working
theory. It’s not like we’re ready to issue an arrest warrant or anything,”
Eddie chuckled as he clicked off.

Although Rob and Eddie grew
up just blocks apart and saw each other regularly throughout their time at
Bayside Elementary School, it wasn’t until they both won spots on Tamalpais
High School’s junior varsity basketball team that they became inseparable.

Their parents always laughed
about the fact that they had mirror image families. Rob had a sister, Lisa, who
was two years his junior, and Eddie had an older sister— Andrea, who was two
years his senior.

They were born one week
apart. And although they went their separate ways at San Francisco State—Rob
into journalism and Eddie into criminal justice—the two stayed very close. In
fact, Eddie served as Rob’s best man when he married Karin, and Rob as Eddie’s
best man when he married Sharon.

Eddie’s parents, like Rob’s,
chose a different place than Sausalito to retire. Rob’s parents headed south to
San Diego, whereas Eddie’s parents headed north, retiring in Spokane,
Washington, where Eddie’s mom had grown up.

Eddie’s parents sold their
home on the flats near Sausalito’s City Hall, which supplemented their
retirement savings, and allowed them to buy their new home in Spokane for cash.
The small two-bedroom rental house on Locust was snug, but comfortable for
Eddie, Sharon, and their son, Aaron.

Over beers, usually at the
end of a long work week, at the town’s one “neighborhood dive bar,” Smitty’s,
Eddie and Rob often complained or simply joked about some of the “small minded
nitwits” that too often dominated their hometown’s daily life.

Local politics alone provided
them, and the town as a whole, with their own theater of the absurd. For
decades, the town’s city council had been a source of jokes and wonderment
throughout the county. Fights broke out regularly among council members,
sometimes during public meetings. Actual physical injuries were rare, but feuds
were common and could last a decade or longer. Rob in a
Standard
editorial, after one of these fights, labeled Sausalito “Baghdad by the Bay,”
an oft-repeated joke that generated laughs for months afterwards.

Most assumed that at least
three or four of the city’s five council members were taking money or “favors”
in exchange for their votes. One development project, for…say a small bed and
breakfast establishment, would sail through the planning process and win
council approval…only to be followed six months later with an all but identical
project being “killed in committee.”

It even became common
knowledge in town that your project, which could be anything from opening a new
tourist trinket shop, to a new restaurant, to a hillside mega home, would fare
better in the hands of one of the council majority’s favored architects,
attorneys, or real estate agents. All of which helped to reinforce Sausalito’s
reputation as “the meanest little town in the west.”

But, for all the in-fighting,
mean spirited gossip, adulterous affairs, viciously thrown insults, and
occasionally thrown punches, murder was a most rare occurrence. Most of Eddie’s
homicides came from the few pockets of poverty and crime in the county. In
towns the
Standard
covered weekly: Sausalito, Belvedere, Tiburon, Mill
Valley and Ross, people might have expressed a desire to kill their neighbors,
but they rarely acted on that impulse. The last murder investigation in
Sausalito was over a decade ago, and it ended quickly when a jealous lover
confessed to what she described as “a crime of passion.”

Eddie was still chuckling as
he pushed his way up the narrow steep steps into the
Standard
’
s
offices.

While it was a busy day for
both Rob and Holly, what with tomorrow’s edition of the Tiburon/Belvedere paper
due at the printers by three that afternoon, they were both eager to hear any
news Eddie might bring.

“I’ll tell you two, right up
front—this case is going to take awhile.”

Rob shook his head and gave a
half chuckle. “If that’s the case, then the Ladies of Liberty—a.k.a. the nearly
deaf and the nearly dead—are going to go wild. Warren was their poster boy!
They’ll be organizing protests outside of Sausalito police headquarters,
demanding answers.”

“See if I give a shit,” Eddie
retorted. “My office is in Marin City, and they won’t be showing up there
anytime soon.”

Marin City is a small enclave
at the northern edge of Sausalito. It was developed in the 1940s to house
hundreds of the ship builders hired to turn out cargo vessels for the war effort
in the Pacific. Today, Marin City is predominately African American.

Eddie was right. It was a
safe bet that Alma Samuels and the majority of her friends had never set foot
in Marin City, despite it being just two miles from their picture-perfect homes.

“Come on, Rob, admit it,”
Eddie added, “Any headache for Petersen is usually entertainment for you, not
to mention great copy for the paper.”

Holly’s eyes opened wide.
“Don’t those clowns have some clues as to who may have done it?”

“Hey, watch that, Holly, I’m
now included in the “clowns” without clues. Look, in truth, there’s not a
helluva lot of evidence up there. This is certainly one strange case! Bradley’s
missing hands are going to make it an ongoing story. Rob knows that better than
just about anyone else in town.” Eddie shrugged. “Rob finds him on the porch
swing, enjoying the fresh air. Only thing wrong is that he’s cold as ice. The
guy is seventy-two, perhaps a little on the young side for a stroke or heart
attack, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Petersen and the EMT boys
can’t get the county coroner, so they’re happy to take him up to the morgue and
get the hell back to their coffee and computer games. Then we hit a big
snag—the nicely dressed gentleman’s two arms end at his wrists. No hands. So,
where are the hands?”

Rob and Holly, who were
seemingly transfixed by his retelling of the facts, merely shook their heads
and shrugged their shoulders.

“We can’t find any hands, and
we’ve got four of Sausalito’s finest looking for them as we speak, including
traipsing through that thick underbrush under Bradley’s house.” Eddie wasn’t
trying too hard to keep from chuckling over the very thought of that.