The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (3 page)

Apparently, when the
Sausalito patrol car arrived at their home, Mrs. Randolph was sprawled across
the living room floor, and her husband appeared to have been drinking heavily.
For all Warren knew, Grant Randolph might have been released hours after
arriving at the county jail. While it made for juicy gossip, the entire
incident might amount to far more smoke than fire. 

Unfortunately for Warren, the
assumption of an abused wife was not something Alma was going to allow to go
away.

“There is no way that man
should be allowed to continue in his current position,” Alma said once more;
this time with even greater conviction. “While I still believe you want to be
careful about what you put in your column, you’re in the best position to tell
other members of the commission just what sort of man they are dealing with. As
you know, Warren, Sausalito is a town of just seven thousand people, but only a
few hundred of us really count. We can’t do anything about Randolph choosing to
live in Sausalito, but we can make certain he doesn’t serve in a position of
honor and responsibility.”

Warren’s chest tightened as
Alma dug in deeper.

“Eight months from today, we
hold our annual Fine Arts Gala. To have that man hosting such an important
evening just won’t do! I’m sure you agree!”

At this stage, Warren could
do nothing more than agree. Like a commuter chasing a departing ferry,
breathlessly he squeaked, “Oh, you’re right Alma, you’re right!”

Enough silence stood between
them that the ever-hovering Louise thought it appropriate to ask if either of
them wished for tea.

Alma thanked her, but said
she was a little tired and planned on taking a nap. She dismissed Louise, then
turned her cold blue eyes on Warren—a certain cue that it was time for him to
go.

He lifted his rumpled self
from the soft wingback and bid a silent farewell to the gracious home with its
extended views.

“Let me know what happens
next regarding this terrible business. If Randolph isn’t relieved of his post
on the commission by the time planning for the gala begins, I’ll have to
rethink my support of the entire organization,” Alma concluded with a resolve
Warren believed he had not heard in her voice in years.

As his car journeyed down the
steep road leading back toward his home, Warren thought about what had just
transpired. In his experience, gossip was rarely intended to turn into tangible
action. Rather, it was a flavor, like nectarine juice in a red wine sauce,
savored briefly on the tongue, and then remembered only by its afterglow.

He had certainly stirred the
pot.

He hadn’t anticipated such a
bitter aftertaste.

Rob Timmons’ weekly routine
would have exhausted most people, but it was a schedule Rob was well accustomed
to seven years after his purchase of the
Sausalito Standard.

Historically, the paper came
out weekly, arriving in homes every Wednesday. But a year after buying the
paper for a surprisingly small sum from its aging and retiring founder, Rob
struck upon a clever idea. If he took the paper’s center twelve pages and put a
different four page “wrap” around each week’s edition, he could greatly expand
his reach, and more importantly, the value of his advertising. Thereby, for
example, the
Belvedere/Tiburon Standard
arrived with its own cover, and
several news stories unique to the two communities directly across Richardson
Bay. Over the next two years, Rob expanded into Mill Valley, and then started a
fourth edition which covered the central Marin County communities of Kentfield,
Ross, San Anselmo, Greenbrae, Larkspur, and Corte Madera, all of which were
crowded into a relatively small part of the central portion of the county known
as Ross Valley. The one thing all ten of these communities had in common: each
was among the highest family-income zip codes in America—in other words,
neighborhoods where the listing of a home with a price of one million dollars
or less was viewed as a “fixer upper.” 

To the untrained eye, it may
have seemed an impossible task for a news organization essentially run by two
individuals—in this case, Rob, with the support of his full time
assistant/production manager, Holly Cross.

For community news coverage,
Rob recruited a host of mostly retired or semi-retired volunteer contributors
in all the areas of the county in which the weekly
Standard
appeared.
Local stories were rarely subjects that received any attention from one of the
Bay Area’s major news outlets. Nevertheless, there were local readers who
greatly appreciated knowing about the planned opening of new bike only lanes,
road repair, and construction projects that would cause a detour somewhere
along the route of their daily commute, or interviews with a new commission
member espousing on ways in which they plan to enrich the lives of their
community. Most importantly, homeowners wanted to know about new school and
construction bonds before they appeared in the form of additional property
taxes from the county assessor’s office.

Although not yet
thirty-seven, Rob’s hair was already flecked with gray. That, along with the web
of tiny lines edging his watery blue eyes, gave him the appearance of a man
several years older. He grew up in Sausalito, the southern-most of the county’s
web of small towns. His earliest memories centered around the town’s annual
Fourth of July parade, in which Robbie (as he was known then) got to sit atop
the city’s one fire truck alongside his dad, Sausalito’s fire chief. At one
time, the family even had a Dalmatian named Smoke.

Two-thirds of Marin County is
state or federal parkland, much of which Rob explored as a boy on foot. It was
an endless maze of wooded paths and dramatic trails that crisscrossed the
grassy headlands and peaked at several hundred feet before sloping down into a
canyon, deserted river beds, or the edge of the Pacific. As teens, Rob and his
friends—Eddie included—rode their bikes on the pedestrian paths that connected
Sausalito with other Marin towns located in and around iconic Mount
Tamalpais—Mill Valley, Corte Madera, Larkspur, San Anselmo, and Fairfax. With
the exception of occasional blues and rock concerts in Golden Gate Park that
were half music, half open-air pot parties, Robbie, like his parents and their
neighbors, tended to stay on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Compared to the excitement of
San Francisco, Rob’s hometown had a slow and lazy rhythm in which each day
blended quietly into the next. The summer brought some of the chilly air that
annually invaded the San Francisco peninsula from June through September; the
days were mostly idyllically sunny and mild. Winters could bring scattered days
of dark clouds and occasionally heavy rains, but mostly the weather was as
benign as the surroundings. Tranquility was the general rule that marked
Sausalito’s days and nights—provided you avoided the city’s tourist district,
which stretches for approximately a mile along a street called Bridgeway where,
during the peak summer travel season, camera-toting visitors packed the town to
capacity.

Awed by an idyllic location
that combined houses perched on hills above the boats bobbing gently in its
harbor, with a verdant mountain to the north and sparking city lights across
the azure bay to the south, many who came to Sausalito were immediately
entranced. Others found life in Sausalito maddeningly peaceful and retreated back
into livelier San Francisco or more diverse parts of the Bay Area. To those who
asked, “Will you miss the peace and quiet of this place?” The reply would often
be an emphatic, “No.”

As an adult, Rob came to
appreciate both points of view. He married Karin Klein, the daughter of the
local family dentist. They settled into a rental on Easterby Street that they
both called, “the love nest.” By the time their son and daughter, born two
years apart, were both in preschool, Rob’s parents had retired to a condominium
in San Diego and handed Rob and Karin the keys to the family homestead, up on
Filbert Street. With the help of friends, Rob’s grandfather had built the house
in the 1930s. As family legend had it, with no neighbors in a section that was
designated for homes with an address in the 300s, Grandpa Jack, a devout
Catholic, chose 333 Filbert for his address, in honor of the Holy Trinity.

As far back as Rob could
remember, Sausalito was a town filled with colorful characters. The most
eccentric of which were the “houseboat people”—artists and other bohemian
types—who lived in abandoned boats and floating homes now tethered along the
communal docks that once made up the town’s Marinship boat yards. Some were
decades-old fixtures, whereas others just drifted into town for a few months or
a few years, and then just as quietly drifted away. Since Sausalito’s
beginnings as a weekend retreat for San Francisco’s wealthier families, the
“hill folk” had always been a wide mix of interesting characters as well.

The changing American economy
in recent decades only helped to exacerbate the distance in Sausalito, and most
Marin communities, between the haves and the have-nots. With a slow but steady
influx into most Marin townships of well-heeled newcomers, the economic
difference could now better be described as the haves and the have-mores.

The town’s value was always
in flux, but in recent times, the small homes that once housed city workers and
bridge and road builders—usually two-bedroom bungalows located off of the spine
of Caledonia Street, known to locals as “the flats,”— began to sell for prices
nearing the million-dollar mark.

The steady increase in
property values has eroded the base of Sausalito’s third and fourth generation
residents. In the town’s two old local-serving bars, Smitty’s and The No Name,
the children and grandchildren of Sausalito’s greatest generation of tradesmen
and day laborers could be heard assuaging their regrets over selling the family
homestead over mugs of beer with the uplifting realization that, “at least I’ve
now got enough money to pay cash for a nice big home in the East Bay.”

Rob knew that he and Karin
might make that choice in twenty-plus years, after their kids were grown and
living independent lives. But his real ideal was to keep the home in the
family, and if possible, live out his years there. “A lot of people dream about
ending up in a place like this,” he told Karin one mild star-dusted night after
getting their two young children to sleep. “We’re already here. Sure, I’d like
to travel and see the world one day, but after we’re done, I’d probably want to
come home to Sausalito.”

The very first thing Warren
did upon returning home from his visit with Alma, was to open a fine Madeira.
As he sipped it, he wondered about his next move. He was having second thoughts
about that weekly column he had written just two hours earlier. Even he was
growing tired of his oft-repeated complaints regarding careless littering
tourists and inconsiderate surly teenagers.

How heroic he would appear if
he used his column to make a direct assault on that social climber, Grant
Randolph! At that moment, his pre-smart cellphone rang.

The caller ID flashed:
Alma
S

He hesitated to push the talk
button, but knew he must. There was never any point in avoiding a call from
Alma. She would simply track you down within in an hour or two.

Quickly, he cleared his
throat, slapped an imagined smile on his face, and hit the accept button.

“Yes, hello Alma.”

As she often did, Alma
ignored pleasantries and went straight to the reason for her call. “I want you
to call Ethel Landau and discuss this situation with her. She’s been on the
arts commission for years and supported Randolph becoming chair of the
commission. I think she’s the best person for you to speak to about this.”

Warren’s palms involuntarily
dampened as he considered the obvious:

This situation was quickly
escalating.

Landau was another longtime
member of the Ladies of Liberty. Warren was well aware that any thing you said
to either her or Alma quickly got back to the other.

“I’ll call her right now,”
Warren promised, hoping to sound cheerful.

“I’ve been thinking about
this since you left my house. This man Randolph could be a black eye to the
integrity of every other member of the commission, including Ethel! You are
well aware of my feelings—his continued position on the commission is
untenable! After you have filled Ethel in on the details, I’ll speak to her as
well. Call me back,” she barked, and then clicked off.

Warren could not remember Alma
this animated since she organized the effort to prevent outside café dining in
the city’s downtown district.

In fact, the Ladies of
Liberty was first formed as a subcommittee of the Women’s League, charged with
organizing Sausalito’s annual July 4
^th
parade. In the many years
since, this group became something of a punch line in town. When anything that
was popular with the under fifty set was legislated out of existence by the
Sausalito City Council—a body dominated by Robin Mitchell for more than a quarter
of a century—it was assumed that the Ladies of Liberty were the unseen hand
behind the effort.

As to chairs and tables on
city streets, their unified battle cry became, “Outdoor dining indeed!” In
their view it was just another tactic by realtors and merchants to lure
tourists to stay and dine and deny locals the quiet enjoyment of their
downtown.

Warren often imagined himself
as being the hidden hand driving events. Clearly now, with Alma and the Ladies
of Liberty committed to Randolph’s ouster, events were driving
him.

Perhaps it was time for him
to take action of his own. He was, after all, the only one among them who had a
newspaper column that was delivered weekly into every home in Sausalito.

When feeling pressed by
unexpected events, Warren would go to his kitchen and make himself a treat.
Food preparation gave him time to consider his next step.

He made himself a nice crepe,
with eggs, milk, vanilla and a half-cup of brandy, topped with apricot jelly
and sprinkled with powder sugar.

A half hour later, his
outlook on life was already looking a lot brighter. Sipping a cappuccino, he
was fortified enough to do as instructed by Alma, and called Ethel Landau.

He had no concern about
building a case against Randolph out of thin air, but if the ladies were going
to ask him to press for Randolph’s removal as commission chair, he’d need more
than the idle chatter he so often spun into news. He was not naturally given to
the life of an investigative reporter: gathering facts, checking and
re-checking sources, and digging through files. But clearly, Alma was pushing
him to lead the “Randolph Out Now” movement. It wouldn’t hurt if he came to the
party armed with a few facts.