The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (17 page)

Eddie nodded and smiled, but
made no comment of his own.

After another round of
handshakes, the three officers faded back into the crowd. Holly tugged Rob in
close and whispered, “Hansen and Harding look healthy enough to throw Bradley
over their shoulders and play dress up with him, don’t ya think?”

“I suppose you’re thinking
they really didn’t like that caramel chicken of his?”

“Who knows? Maybe if I tied
them both up, I could slap the truth out of them.”

“You know, Holly, you really
have to stop reading all those hot cop romance books every day on your lunch
hour.”

“Listen, a girl’s got to have
some fun. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but with the exception of a
murder mystery every now and then, the community news business can get a little
dull.”

“Yeah, who knows, Holly? If
you stick around, in another ten or twenty years, you might get another mystery
to solve.”

Over tea later that
afternoon, Rob shared with Karin what he had learned the night before about
Bradley’s final column.

“Eddie told me that they
collected a number of Warren’s things and brought them to the county crime lab
for analysis. They were happy to have his laptop. If it had named who he dined
with Tuesday night, it might have been the big break they needed.
Unfortunately, that day’s calendar just said ‘Dinner here.’ The most
interesting item was that his next “Heard About Town” column demanded
Randolph’s resignation from the arts commission.”

“Wow!” Karin said.

“I know. Eddie is wondering
if he was looking for a comment from Randolph about what he was planning to
write. Maybe that’s what brought Ray Sirica to his door around six forty-five
that evening.” He frowned. “His computer indicated that he made his final edits
on the piece just a few minutes earlier, but there was no comment from Randolph
in his column.”

“Wouldn’t that keep Randolph
off the suspect list?” Karin asked.

“Not really. Sirica might
have gone to the house and told his pal Grant what Bradley was up to, causing
Randolph to blow his stack and go up to Prospect to have a little talk with
Warren. That talk might not have gone very well. Next thing you know, Bradley’s
sitting on the back porch, minus two hands. Of course, the big problem with that
scenario is, why all the clear evidence that Warren was entertaining a guest
later that same night? It doesn’t make any obvious sense.”

“It’s like a giant jigsaw
puzzle, isn’t it?”

“It is, and Eddie would sure
like to have at least a few of the pieces fall into place.”

On Sunday morning, Rob woke
with the thought that he still needed a fresh angle on the Bradley murder to
lead his coverage of what some of the locals were calling Sausalito’s most
talked about event since Randolph Hearst was sent packing.

The dailies and the
television and radio outlets rushed in and covered the
what, where, when
and
how.

Now, it was Rob’s turn to
start covering the story’s final and most important aspect: The
who.

To that end, Rob called Eddie
to check on a couple of facts.

Eddie, always concerned about
what was said over the phone, suggested that Rob come by his place, “On your
way over, pick up some bagels,” Eddie insisted.

Eddie’s wife, Sharon, greeted
Rob with a kiss on the check as he came through the door.

“There he is, the great
orator!” Eddie said. “You should have heard him, hon, he had those old ladies
weeping away for their dearly departed chef.”

“Don’t let him tease you,
Rob. I ran into Marilyn Williams last night at Mollie Stone’s. She said that
all of the Ladies of Liberty were very impressed with your eulogy. She even let
it slip that Alma saw you in ‘a different and more positive light.’” Sharon, a
short spunky red head who grew up in the neighboring town of Tiburon, tittered
as she indicated quotes around Alma’s approving words.

“Oh, yes, our boy is quite a
star,” Eddie said, putting on a cockney accent. “Sharon, put the kettle on so
we can pour the lad a nice cup of tea.”

“Knock it off, you two. I’ve
got to get serious and write a real piece for this week’s paper.”

“So, your real purpose wasn’t
to bring us bagels, but to pepper me with more questions?” Eddie scowled, “You
want something the daily news boys and girls missed when they came racing
through town last week? Well, fire away, Clark Kent. Just remember, pal, I
ain’t got much.”

“I’ll leave you boys to your
gossip,” Sharon said, grabbing her hot cup of tea and a just-toasted buttered
bagel. “But, Rob, think about giving Holly a shot at knocking out a lead on
Warren Bradley. He once called her, and I quote, ‘a woman of questionable
morals.’ Of course, he never said that to her face. That wasn’t his style.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to run
a business here, you know,
make a living
,” Rob said.

“I know, darling,” Sharon
said, as she bent down and kissed Rob’s cheek. “I’ll leave you and Sherlock to
your work.”

“We both married interesting
women. You have to agree on that,” Eddie said, as he took a sip of hot tea,
putting his bare feet up on the kitchen table and sitting comfortably in his
plaid pajamas. “As for the Bradley case, it’s pretty much where we left it on
Friday afternoon. Unless it’s the murder of the governor, investigators and the
ME’s office are pretty much off the hook when it comes to pushing cases forward
over the weekend. But tell me what you’re thinking about writing, and let me
see if I can add something to it.”

“Well,” Rob began, thinking
out loud while hoping an idea might occur to either of them, “a lot of the
basic facts are already out on the table. Obviously, the murder, the
disfigurement of the body, Bradley being found on the porch, all that kind of
information; but could I write about any suspects, people being questioned
about their whereabouts at the time of the crime, etcetera.”

“Okay, let’s think about
that. A lot of people in town know about the dust-up between Randolph and
Bradley. You could ask me, if Randolph has been questioned, given their
contentious relationship, and I could say, “The Randolphs flew to New York City
on business Wednesday morning, and have been contacted by the police who
requested an interview upon their return, which is not expected until Wednesday
of this week.

“You could also note that
Warren had an elevated blood alcohol level at the time of his death. Police
have assumed that he was entertaining a guest in the hours before he was
killed, but no one yet has come forward to say that they were that guest, or to
suggest that they might know who Mr. Bradley’s guest was.”

“Can I mention that you
interviewed Ray Sirica?”

“That’s probably alright. The
fact that Sirica was seen driving to Bradley’s home in the hours before the
Bradley murder originated with a neighbor. Just call the neighbor. You could
also call Sirica for comment on the case.”

And if he doesn’t disclose
that he was interviewed by the police?” Rob asked.

Just mention that Marin
County Sheriff Department’s Inspector, Eddie Austin, was seen entering his
home, and he’ll give. Let’s face it—I didn’t pull up in front of his house and
walk up his steps with a cloak of invisibility wrapped around me.”

“True that,” Rob laughed.

“Some of Sausalito’s pinheads
want to make Sirica out to be some mob syndicate guy. That’s complete bullshit!
Having your name end in a vowel doesn’t make you a made man. Sirica got lucky
and sold the pajama business he inherited from his folks for a small fortune.
Sirica is about as hard to crack as an egg,” Eddie said with a chuckle, as he
took a bite of his bagel.

Rob nodded. “Okay, so what
was Bradley’s alcohol level, and what, if anything, did it mean?”

“It doesn’t tell us much more
than that he had enough booze in him to get a DUI from Sausalito’s finest,
which isn’t much, as we both learned as kids. But there was not a level of
booze that would have contributed to his death…at least, not directly. The
unknown factor is whether that amount of wine would make him sleepy enough to
make the killer’s likely act of suffocation that much easier to perform. In
that scenario, the alcohol would be a contributing factor. It’s not an exact
science; in a thirty-two year-old, that scenario would be unlikely, but at
seventy-two, it could certainly have slowed his response to his attacker, if he
ever really had any response at all. You could say, minus his fingers, we have
no evidence of whether he clawed at his killer, but as I told you before, any
real struggle would have led to at least some bruising to the face.”

“So then, I can say that
police suspect that Bradley’s hands were severed, most likely, as an attempt by
the killer to send an as of yet undetermined message?”

“Free press, Rob. Say
anything you want. Just do me the favor of passing by me any comments that
you’re attributing to me.”

“Of course, Eddie. And could
it have been something more potent than wine that Bradley was drinking?”

Interesting you should ask
that, Rob. A simple blood test can’t distinguish between beer, wine, and
whiskey. But because the ME’s staff wanted to check for any toxic substances
that might have been slipped into Bradley’s drink that would make killing him
by suffocation that much easier; they confirmed that the only identifiable
substance in the alcohol found in him carried the chemical signature of wine.”

“Could they still get
accurate results, given that his body was not found for eighteen or more
hours?”

“Yes, because he was outside
on a mild Sausalito afternoon, on a back porch that gets sun in the morning.
That wouldn’t really affect decomposition of the body. More than likely, he was
out there through the entire previous night, when temperatures were down in the
upper forties. The afternoon high briefly reached seventy degrees, but his back
porch was in shade well before that. Now, on the other hand, leave a body on a
porch swing in Houston for eighteen hours in the middle of May, and you have a
lot worse situation. In any kind of significant heat, a body begins to
decompose in a hurry.”

“Did his stomach contents
tell you much about the time he was killed?”

“Some. A good deal of what he
ate that evening had not been fully digested, but it doesn’t help us much as it
pertains to establishing a time frame. Body temperature, at the time a body is
retrieved, can give you a reasonable guesstimate. In a case like this, where
you’ve got a dead guy sitting out on his back deck for nearly a full day, the
old ‘time of death,’ estimates start to get pretty squirrelly. Their best
guestimate is between eleven p.m. and midnight.”

“Obviously, you must have
done some things to look for prints and other bio signatures that the killer
could have left behind.”

“Well, listen to you,
Rob—‘bio signatures,’ la-dee-dah,” Eddie teased. “You’ve been signing up for
those FBI Citizen Academy forensic courses in your spare time, haven’t you? I
know some of those Design Review Board meetings can get pretty heated, but they
rarely lead to murder. Admit it—you wouldn’t mind if the case of the gossiping
gourmet led to a string of murders all around the county.”

“Come on, Eddie, stop busting
my chops. So, there’s nothing you have in the way of prints or physical
evidence?”

“You’re leading the witness,”
Eddie laughed while shaking his head. “I’ll tell you, man, the crime lab boys
gave that place the once-over. The porch swing had prints, but they all
belonged to the Sausalito PD and the fire guys, from when they were doing their
comedy act trying to get his body off the swing and onto a stretcher. Other
than that, we came up with a whole lot of nothing. I think our biggest break is
that the body was found on the back porch of the cottage. Can you imagine the
mess those cops and fire rescue boys would have made if they had actually gone
traipsing through the house?”

“You still turned up little
helpful evidence inside, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s a lot better
to know that than to have to figure out where the contamination of the murder
scene ends, and where the evidence begins.”

Eddie paused and took a long
sip of tea. “Rob, this guy is no doubt deranged. As we were saying the other
day, he was methodical enough to clean up his prints. He also knew to wait long
enough after the victim died so that he could whack off the hands without making
a mess. Let’s just say he knows more than the average killer about the
condition of a dead body. I wouldn’t want you sharing that with our fellow
citizens.”

“I’ll run by you whatever I’m
doing before it appears in print.”

Eddie laughed. “If the
New
York Times
food critic gets in on this case, I doubt she’ll give me the
same consideration.”

“Not too likely that
The
Times
will get involved. In fact, I think the
San Francisco Chronicle
and the
Marin Independent Journal
will drop the story until there’s an
arrest and a trial.”

“That would be my guess, too,
Rob.”

“I’ll do a wrap-up story on
the case this week. I’m sure I’ll get some reactions from the ones most likely
to want to give comments.”

“I trust you have Alma’s
number?” Eddie smirked.

Rob chuckled, “Heck yeah!
I’ve got her on speed dial.”

“Just go with the Randolph
angle for now. You know—undisclosed source close to the investigation suggested
it was likely that Grant Randolph would be questioned upon his return from New
York.”

Rob nodded. “That will shake
him up a bit.”

“Whoa, wait a minute, Rob!
I’ve got an even better angle. Print the final column of the late great
gossiping gourmet.”

“What? …Why?”

“A couple of reasons. First,
it gives you something no one else has—a final plea from Warren Bradley to his
fellow citizens to purge Randolph from his leadership position. Second, it will
keep the Ladies of Liberty busy rounding up a lynch mob. And third, if my guess
is right and Bradley was killed by one of his fellow citizens whose initials
are not GR, it encourages our killer to continue to hide in plain sight. Every
day he thinks he’s in the clear is one more opportunity for him to fall victim
to his own conceit.” Eddie grimaced. “Killing someone, and thinking you have
gotten away with it, can be a very heady thing. While Alma is campaigning for
Randolph to be brought to justice, we might just have the time we need to find
the real killer.”

“Are you that sure Randolph
really isn’t your man?”

“Absolutely! I’d be more
inclined to think Sirica than Randolph.”

“Why?”

“One big reason, those pay
phone calls. Not to mention, our killer waited around after the kill in order
to clean up prints, chop off the hands, and dress up the body. The whole crime
was not only methodical; it was pretty damn cocky. If Randolph has an Achilles
heel, it’s his temper. This wasn’t an act of sudden passion. I’m betting that
whoever killed Bradley had been thinking about killing him for a very long
time.”

By now, Rob was anxious to
start writing his first full story on the Bradley killing—something that went
far beyond the short posts he had written on the paper’s website, always ending
with a reminder that there would be more on the killing in the next edition of
the
Standard
.

“By the way, have you written
anything about finding the body in the online version of your paper?” Eddie
asked.

“No. I’ve been trying to keep
myself out of it. Why?”

“For starters, there are a
lot of cases where a killer is the first person to report the crime.”