The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (21 page)

“If this is your way of
saying you want to kiss and makeup?” Holly teased, “You can buy back my
affections with a martini.”

“Good, I was hoping you’d say
that, so grab your bag and let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, they
settled in on the far quiet end of the bar, Rob with a Guiness, and Holly
taking that first needed sip of her beloved Hangar 1 martini.

“So, what’s up, boss? You’ve
been more than your usual grumpy self this week,” she asked.

“I know, Holly. I’m sorry
about that. I told you I’ve been trying to put together a piece about Warren
Bradley’s life, and…”

She frowned. “Are you sure
you want to do that?”

“I have to, Holly. His murder
is the biggest news story we’ve had around here in a very long time. For six
years, he wrote a column for the newspaper. Sausalito readers expect me to do a
more complete piece on his life,” Rob explained, using essentially the same
line he’d used with each member of the Ladies of Liberty.

“Okay, so what’s the
problem?”

“I keep running into the same
blank wall! No one really knows anything about the guy before he showed up in
Sausalito. Even in the career he supposedly retired from—a position in
finance—I can’t find any link to him actually holding any position in the
field. It’s like the guy one day just popped up out of the ground.”

“Gosh! I guess he was even
creepier than I imagined.”

“Alma thought he attended
Carnegie Mellon as a grad or undergrad student, but I found no record of him
having ever attended the school. She also said that Bradley claimed to have
attended the Culinary Institute up in Napa, but there is no record of him
there, either. So, I was thinking—”

“Say no more, boss. I’ll use
my special talent as an online researcher to see if I can track the guy down—or
at least get some idea of where he came from, and what he was doing before he
landed here and started pissing people off.”

“Holly, that would be great.
I’m not thinking there’s anything sinister to all this, but his past seems to
have been pretty well buried. I’d love to know why.”

“Happy to do it. Maybe I’ll
turn up something really nasty on the guy. I’d love that, after all the shit
and misery he stirred up for others.”

“Boy, you really did not like
that guy.”

“In addition to his
not-to-subtle suggestions that I was a libertine woman—based on the fact that
I’m mid, uh early thirties and single—there’s the whole thing with Carrie Kahn
and the supposed raffle money embezzlement bullshit. Carrie’s just a bit dippy,
like half the people in this town. I don’t think she did a very good job of
keeping separate the cash she got from tips working behind the bar at Cat ‘n
Fiddle, and all the tickets she was selling to customers. But that jerk’s
innuendoes just tore her up! She thought the real reason Warren humiliated her
is she didn’t come rushing over every time his wine glass needed refilling. I
know it’s not a big deal, Rob, but I’m telling you: the guy was a sneaky,
creepy SOB.”

“I don’t doubt it, Holly. I
only wish I’d been paying more attention to what he was writing each week. I
probably would have put an end to his column years ago. Too many editions and
too many columns to get produced every week is my only excuse.”

“Yeah. It helped Warren’s
cause that the column was a favorite with so many readers. And, where would we
be without readers?”

Rob waved to the bartender.
“I think you need another martini, Holly. Let me get us another round.”

“Good idea! When all else
fails, we can still have one more martini.” She downed the rest of her glass.
“Well, here’s to Warren—wherever he is and whoever he was.”

In Rob’s view, running weekly
community newspapers was like jumping on a treadmill that never stops. For all
its frustrations, however, there were moments of unique pleasure when you
stumbled onto a story that everyone else missed.

Rob was proud of Eddie for
suggesting they get on the trail of Warren Bradley’s past. The deeper that
mystery ran, the more Rob was sure it somehow connected back to Warren’s
murder.

As Eddie was quick to point
out, random murders are relatively rare events. “Case in point,” he’d once said
to Rob, “is the obvious exception of a madman taking a gun and shooting anyone
who tragically happens to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The more letters that landed
on Rob’s desk asking why Grant Randolph had not yet been arrested for the
murder of Warren Bradley, the more Rob thought how ridiculous that entire idea
was.

Unlike Bradley, Randolph had
a very well-documented past. From his childhood in Providence, Rhode Island, to
his attending Brown University, to his developing one of SoHo’s most successful
art galleries, it was all there.

On the other hand, Bradley
had a past that disappeared like San Francisco behind a thick veil of summer
fog. If he, indeed, was over seventy at the time of his death, then Warren was
probably in his mid- to late-forties when he arrived in Sausalito. Rob also
became convinced that Bradley must have had a hand in obscuring his own past.

Late Saturday, a frustrated
Holly called Rob with her own bad news.

“Wow, buddy, you were right!
I spent the day coming up with blanks. This has to be a case of name change,
and it must have occurred outside of California, because the state’s database
on application filings for name changes is a pretty damn good. Unfortunately,
it has nothing on the Warren Bradley we’re looking for.”

“Thanks, Holly. Something
stinks alright, and I’d love to know what it is.”

“When you find out something
nefarious about the guy, please let me know. And whatever you do, don’t tell
the Ladies of Liberty until after they erect that statue. I want to be there
when they have to tear it down.” Holly laughed, said “Ciao,” and clicked off.

Rob sat at his desk for a
moment and stared at the first few paragraphs of the story he was trying to
cobble together on his late columnist. He knew he was going nowhere in a hurry.
It was time to call Eddie.

On Sunday morning, they met
for breakfast at a small café in the town of Larkspur. Being ten miles north of
Sausalito, there was a very slim chance that they would run into any of their
neighbors, let alone someone curious enough to overhear them. 

“From everything I can put
together, Bradley didn’t exist before he landed in Sausalito,” Rob said with a
frown.

Eddie smiled. “I’m starting
to think our victim might have been a bad little boy. Maybe something—or more
accurately someone—finally caught up to the great chef.”

“What do you guys do when you
hit a wall like this? I mean, it’s got to be a name change or something like
that, right?”

“Pretty damn likely. Every
year, more about all of us is ending up online. Bradley likely wanted to hide
from prying eyes. Unless you’re paying attention, there’s an awful lot about us
that just leaks out into the world.”

“Yeah,” Rob said with a short
laugh. “You mean with the people of prying eyes—like his.”

“It takes a snoop to know a
snoop.”

Rob took a sip of his coffee.
“You must have a plan B.”

“Yep, and Plans C, D, and E,
as well. Whatever he did, we know it happened before he landed in Sausalito.
But one thing we know for certain: we can’t trace him through the FBI’s
fingerprint data bank. The killer might have Bradley’s fingerprints, but we
don’t. And, therefore, we don’t know if he ever worked one of a dozen different
jobs that they now fingerprint people for as part of their standard personnel
procedure.”

“So, what’s the next step?”

“I think it’s time for us to
do a little morning jog together, say five-thirty tomorrow.”

Rob groaned. “Why the hell so
early?”

“Because we’re going on a
little hunting expedition up to Warren Bradley’s place. When we were called
onto the scene and my two colleagues from the Sausalito PD scattered to
different parts of the house. I ‘accidentally’ took a spare key to Warren’s
cottage. I could go through channels, but, A, I don’t know what it is we’re
looking for, never what you want to tell your supervisor, and B, an authorized
search means taking the Keystone Cops along. Instead, I’m up for a little
snooping while I’m off the clock.”

“Can’t we just drive up there
this evening? I can wait in the car while you snoop around.”

“More convenient, for sure.
But there’s a good chance that a neighbor will see the lights on, or see a
flashlight and call SPD—which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.”

“And why do we want to keep
the SPD out of this?”

“Because, if you remember,
the officers and staff of the SPD are the original town gossips! How do you
think Bradley caught the name of everyone’s favorite suspect, Mr. Randolph, in
the first place? I don’t know which one of those chuckleheads babbled about
Randolph’s arrest for assaulting his wife, but I’ll bet you a week’s salary
that was Warren’s original source for that story. If we got caught up there,
we’d be the talk of the town forty-eight hours later. Clearly, we need to get
in and out of there, while hopefully flying under the radar.”

At five-thirty Monday
morning, Rob watched the brightening sky over the East Bay from the driveway
outside his home, as Eddie came running up. Together, they looked like any
other early morning power joggers.

They took a circuitous route,
winding through the Sausalito hills. Part of the route took them on Glen Drive.
They followed it as it snaked down to Santa Rosa, then onto San Carlos,
Spencer, and finally onto Prospect.

By the time they had reached
the end of Prospect, it was nearly six o’clock. By then, they’d come to the
mutual conclusion that they should consider jogging the hills more often.

“Helluva workout,” Eddie
panted. Rob nodded breathlessly in agreement.

The sun was peeking up over
the city of Berkeley across the bay, and the air was sparkling fresh.

Eddie reached into his pocket.
“Oh, shit! I forgot the key.”

As the color drained out of
Rob’s face, Eddie punched him lightly on the chest. “I’m just screwing with ya,
man.” He pulled the key out of his pocket and smiled, then shifted his gaze
towards the neighboring homes. After seeing that not a single soul was
stirring, he murmured, “Let’s do this now.”

The place was still wrapped
with the bright yellow CRIME SCENE tape that was put on the house the night
Warren had been wheeled away. It covered the door about six inches above the
simple doorknob lock that provided the home’s only security.

Eddie kneeled down below the
tape, slipped the key in the lock, and nodded as it turned and opened. He then
reached into his pocket and pulled out two pairs of surgical footwear covers,
and two pairs of blue nitrile gloves.

“Slip these on, Robin,” Eddie
said.

“Whatever you say, Batman.”

They slipped carefully under
the tape and into the house, quietly closing the single hinged French door
behind them.

Warren’s cottage held in the
chill of Sausalito’s night air. Enough daylight came in through the windows to
provide just the needed amount of light. Eddie’s first suggestion was that they
walk through each room of the small home and consider where they might want to
begin their search.

“I’d like to be out of here
by seven at the latest. But, let me just say, if anyone comes tapping on the
door, from nosy neighbor to Sausalito PD, I do the talking. Agreed?”

“You got any idea what you’d
say?”

“That’s easy. If you see
anyone pull up, or a neighbor come walking toward the house, strip off your
gloves and booties. We were jogging together, and noticed that the front door
was ajar. I stepped inside to see if anything seemed to have been disturbed
before calling it in.”

“Wow! You are smooth, Eddie.”

“In my line of work, you
better know how to bullshit at a moment’s notice.”

Rob nodded happily in favor
of Eddie’s declaration, and then said, “Okay, tell me again what you think we
might find.”

“Bradley might have wanted,
or needed, to obscure his past. But most people hold onto certain things
because of sentimental attachment, let alone a dozen other reasons. I doubt
that everything in his life that was more than twenty-five-plus years old was
trashed. There may be an original birth certificate, or a picture of him with
his parents or siblings. In other words, look for anything that gives us a key
to who he was before he became the Warren Bradley the Ladies of Liberty so
adored.”

They split up, and began
wandering through the cottage. Clearly, the wood paneling throughout had
absorbed the aromas of the countless meals that had been made in the small
neatly arranged kitchen, which still showed the signs of Warren’s last night of
entertaining. Two dinner plates, two dessert plates, and two wine glasses had been
washed, placed in the dish rack, and left there to dry a long time ago.

“Interesting, isn’t it, Rob?
Clearly, the killer wanted us to know that Bradley had a dinner guest. No
prints anywhere in the place, but obvious signs that a guest was here. There
were even food scraps pushed into the trash bag under the sink that were
removed and taken to the lab.”

“No luck with that, of
course.”

“Nope. I’m telling you this
place was as clean as any murder scene I’ve ever walked into. Of course, with
the Sausalito police being the first at the scene, there might have been a
slice of chocolate cake on the sideboard that one of their geniuses ate.”

“If they did, it was after I
left and went home, because from the time they arrived after I called them, no
one ever thought to go inside the cottage until the deceased’s hands failed to
appear at the end of his arms.”

Eddie laughed. “That must
have been one helluva moment!”

“Trust me, it’s one I’ll
never forget.”

They wandered back and forth
through the combined living room, dining room, kitchen area, and then around
the bedroom with the small nook Warren used for a desk where he wrote his
now-infamous weekly column.

Afterward, Eddie and Rob
stood back to back and considered where they would look in the relatively brief
time that they had left.

Eddie wanted to start by
going through the Chippendale oak wood curio cabinet. It had a variety of
plaques and awards from various cooking contests and “volunteer of the year”
framed certificates from a variety of Sausalito organizations. He carefully
slipped them out, and looked behind each one. Inside of one frame that had a
back that easily slipped off, was the picture of a kid Eddie guessed to be
about twelve to perhaps fourteen. From the color and the clothing the boy was
wearing, the photo was likely taken in the late seventies or early eighties.
Maybe it was a son Bradley left behind?