The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (5 page)

They chose a town called
Sausalito. Whereas, “Some of the locals can be a little quirky,” Ray and Debbie
agreed that the town was a great place to live.

Grant reasoned that Ray—a big
man, tall, broad-shouldered, with big hands, and a large frame to match—was
five or so years older than himself, probably fiftysomething, he reasoned.
Debbie was a good deal closer to Ray in age than Barbara was to him. She was
slim, with a pleasant smiling face. Her hair was tastefully tinted to cover her
emerging gray, and her brown eyes never wavered in their focus. Her manner was
kind and cautiously sincere.

Grant dealt with a lot of
personalities in the business of fine art. He had convinced himself over the
years that he was a reasonably sound judge of character. Ray was one of those
rare people who, the moment you met, felt as if you had known for a long time.
His relaxed smile seemed to say, “What you see is what you get.” There was
trustworthiness in his open manner. It was a quality that Grant took a liking
to almost instantly. 

Both of the Randolphs felt
comfortable enough with the Siricas to exchange contact information. Before
they went their separate ways, Ray and Debbie asked if they would be in town on
Friday night. “If so, come join us for a reception we’re holding for the city’s
fine arts commissioners,” Ray suggested, and added, “They’re all people I think
you’ll enjoy getting to know.”

An hour later, as Grant and
Barbara began the nearly two-hour ride south to San Francisco, he and Barbara
agreed that Sausalito, a town they knew of, but had never spent any time in,
might indeed be the perfect spot to begin a new and hopefully happier future. 

To both Barbara and Grant,
Sausalito seemed to answer many of the desires they had difficulty verbalizing
when they first imagined moving to California.

For starters, like their new
friends the Siricas, they would be putting bitterly cold winters behind them.
Both couples had lived their entire lives with the reality of long winters, and
often uncomfortably hot summers. Sausalito was blessed with what is often
described as a Mediterranean climate: moderate temperatures year round, with a
five-month season of occasional rainfall, and a seven-month period where it was
rare for more than just a few drops of rain to fall.

Additionally, unlike San
Francisco just across the mile-wide entry to its dazzling bay—a place named by
Spanish explorers in 1769, the Puerta de Oro, or in English, the Golden
Gate—most of Sausalito was rarely subject to the cold fog that rolled into San
Francisco on most summer days.

After settling into their
room at the Casa Madrona Hotel in the center of the quaint little city, the
Randolphs reached out to the Siricas and invited them to dinner at Poggio, the Italian
trattoria adjacent to their hotel.

The afternoon before their
dinner engagement, the Randolphs took a leisurely stroll along the Sausalito
waterfront, which is filled with seemingly endless piers lined with motor
yachts and sailing sloops. Turning south, they walked past the small tourist
district, which was filled with the usual assortment of day visitors. Further
along, they strolled the south end of Bridgeway, which hugs the water as it
winds its way up into the Marin Headlands and onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

The tourist district itself
lasts less than a mile. Where it ended, the Randolphs suddenly found themselves
surrounded by a quiet picturesque town. Looking up at the homes stacked on the
city’s hills, in the soft air and blue light of that May afternoon, it could
have been a painting of a small Mediterranean seaside village.

“It’s a little too perfect to
be real, don’t you think?” Grant said to Barbara as they began up a steep path.

They turned right and went up
Third Street to a small neighborhood park called Southview. There, they sat
down on a bench to recover from a climb neither of them were used to making,
and looked out on a vista that included the San Francisco skyline, the Bay
Bridge, and Oakland. Further east, they could see the iconic clock tower at the
center of the Berkeley campus, as well as Angel Island, and the Tiburon
Peninsula. Sitting in the middle of the bay was, “The Rock,” Alcatraz Island,
home of the long-closed prison.

Barbara leaned her head
comfortably into Grant’s shoulder as he pulled her in close.

“It’s just lovely, isn’t it?”

“You have to keep reminding
yourself that it’s real; it looks more like a scene from a movie,” Grant said.

“It’s incredible that we’re
the only ones sitting here. If there was a spot like this in Manhattan, it
would be packed with people.”

“You’re right, Barb, but you
know,” Grant said, as he lifted his head to look all around, “this amount of
quiet is something I’d need time getting accustomed to.”

After years of living and
working in the lower Manhattan neighborhoods of SoHo and Tribeca, noise,
particularly car horns, was like the ongoing surround sound of an action film.
You only notice it when it stops.

“Wow, you’re right; sitting
here, I don’t hear anything right now,” Barbara said. “No kids outside playing,
no car horns, no sirens. It’s a little eerie.”

Grant gave a little laugh,
and after a long thoughtful pause said, “Weird, yes. But I think I could grow
to love this kind of peace and quiet.”

Barbara snuggled in and
reached up to his lips for a kiss.

“Does it make you happy,
darling?” she asked.

Grant thought for a moment,
and said, “It does. I’m ready for a little more peace and quiet in our lives.”

At dinner that night, Debbie
and Ray shared with the Randolphs how they had come to Sausalito.

“I took over my father’s
business. He made high-end nightwear—pajamas, nightgowns, things like that. A
couple of years ago, we were approached by a big manufacturer. They made us an
offer to buy the entire operation that just, as my dad used to say, knocked our
socks off. So, we took it, and started to ask ourselves, ‘What now?’ We can
live wherever we want, so where would that be?’ There was, and is, a lot we
love about Chicago. In a lot of ways, it’s a great town. But to be honest with
you, the weather pretty much sucks, particularly in the winter.”

“Florida and Arizona are not
our thing,” Debbie added. “We always stayed a few extra days when a trade show
brought us out to San Francisco. On days off, we would often take the ferry
over to Sausalito. We just fell in love with this little town! So, when we had
the chance to reinvent our lives, we started looking into home prices in the
area. We bought after the tech bubble burst in 2000. It wasn’t cheap, but
prices have gone up a lot since then.”

“It’s a good investment,” Ray
added. “Property values around here do one of two things. Either they stay flat
for a year or two, or they steadily go up. As a general rule, the property
value arrow is most often pointed up.” 

That next day, the Randolphs
rented bicycles across the street from the hotel and rode north along the
waterfront into the town of Mill Valley, where the bike trail ended in a plaza
called the Mill Valley Depot. Once a station on the Northwestern Pacific
Railroad’s Marin County Interurban Electric Train Service, which came to an end
just a few years after the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, the depot
now was a coffee and book shop surrounded by high end boutiques. After chaining
their bikes to a rack at the edge of the plaza, they purchased sandwiches and
drinks and walked the few city blocks up to Old Mill Park, where they sat at a
picnic table in the middle of a grove of Redwood trees.

Later, while biking the same
waterfront path back to Sausalito, they discussed their day and agreed that
they had found one more reason to be quite certain that Southern Marin County
was the perfect choice for them.

That night, they took the
short drive from their hotel to the Siricas home, on Sausalito Boulevard. It
was their first time driving through the hills. Steep narrow lanes with blind
curves can be a little intimating to someone driving through them for the first
time, but the beautiful bay vistas around every bend more than made up for the
discomforting feeling of learning to navigate their way through a wholly
different environment.

For a couple accustomed to
the opulent homes of their multi-millionaire art collector clients, the
Randolph’s were still overwhelmed by the Sirica’s home.

“Looks like the cover of
Architectural
Digest
,” Barbara said quietly to Grant, as they walked up the steps to the
front door.

“Why are you whispering?”
Grant asked.

“I’ve heard small towns can
have big ears,” Barbara replied, still speaking in a hushed voice.

“Let’s go inside and take a
look around,” Grant said teasingly, in a soft voice.

Grant and Barbara were
greeted warmly by Ray and Debbie. None of the other guests had arrived yet,
prompting Grant to ask if they had arrived too early.

Ray laughed. “No problem,
happy to see you guys. Let’s get you both a drink.”

Their early arrival gave the
Siricas time to walk the Randolphs around their property.

As they stepped out onto the
veranda for a postcard-worthy view of the bay and the surrounding hills, the
Randolphs were once again deeply impressed by the beauty of what they already
considered their new place in the world.

“You can pretty easily see
why we fell in love with this property,” Debbie said.

“It’s just stunning, the
house and the view,” Barbara replied.

Once the thirty-plus guests
arrived, everyone seemed interested in Barbara and Grant’s story—how they met,
their experience owning and operating a Manhattan art gallery, the tragic
events of 9/11, and Grant’s mystical good fortune in foregoing that breakfast
at the top of the Trade Center on the day of the disaster.

Ethel Landau, who detailed
her longtime service on the arts commission, was not shy in telling Grant to
get involved with her group. As they spoke, Warren—ever watchful, particularly
of potential newcomers to Sausalito—paid careful attention.

“If you do settle here, I
want you to attend an arts commission meeting and find out what our group is
all about,” Ethel said.

“I’d enjoy that,” Grant
responded enthusiastically.

“Sausalito has a wonderful
history with the arts. I think you’ll be impressed.”

Grant nodded. “In fact, I’ve
been reading up on it. Jean Varda, Shel Silverstein, Gordon Onslow—all
renowned. It would have been fun to be part of the waterfront artist scene back
then.”

“Show off,” Warren muttered
under his breath. He knew that two of the five commission seats were up in nine
months. One of the commissioners had already made clear his intention to step
down. Warren had his eye on the position. Now, it looked as if he’d have to
compete for it with this newcomer.

Maybe he’ll let loose with
some tidbit that will knock him out of the box, Warren thought.

He waited an hour, then
walked over to Grant and introduced himself. “I understand that you and your
wife are thinking of moving to our fair city,” Warren began.

“That’s right,” Grant
replied.

“You know, we’re a very
tight-knit little community. Some find it difficult to fit in.”

“Where I come from, people
make a space for themselves and just do their own thing. I guess Manhattan is
just too big and too busy to pay much attention.”

“Oh, it’s very different
here,” Warren insisted. “We look out for our neighbors. We stay close.
Probably, some would say too close.”

“I think every place takes
some getting used to,” Grant countered.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,”
Warren assured him, “as long as you remember that people think you should be
here for ten years or more before you play an active role in the community. I
guess we’re just a little old-fashioned that way.” He shrugged. “By the way,
did you try some of my bruschetta with white beans, tomatoes, and olives?” He
lifted the tray beside them. It held the canapés Warren had brought to the
party.

Grant held up a hand. “I’ll
pass. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see Barbara trying to wave me over.”

How dare he, Warren fumed.

At that moment, he knew
tarnishing Grant’s image would one day be one of his pet projects.