“Oh, yes, our boy is quite the local star,” Eddie said, putting on a cockney accent. “Sharon, put the kettle on so we can pour the lad a nice cuppa tea.”
“Knock it off, you two. I’ve got to get serious and write a real piece for this week’s paper. Hopefully, with some angle the pack of news hounds that blew through here last week never considered.”
“So, your real purpose wasn’t to bring us bagels but to pepper me with more questions?” Eddie scowled teasingly. “You want something the daily news boys and girls missed when they came racing through town last week? Well, fire away, Clark Kent. But remember, I haven’t got much, pal.”
“I’ll leave you boys to your work,” 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 ‘a woman of questionable morals.’ Of course, he never said that to her face, nor in his column. Just a little gem he passed along to a neighbor who, in turn, passed it along to me.”
“I’m just trying to get a little red meat to throw at my readers,” Rob replied with a shrug.
“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,” Eddie said, still in his pajamas, and putting his bare feet up on the chair Sharon had just left empty. “As for the Bradley case, it’s pretty much where we left it Friday afternoon. Unless it’s the murder of a VIP, investigators and the crime lab are off the hook when it comes to pushing cases forward over the weekend. But tell me what you’re thinking, and let me see if I can add something to it.”
“Some basic facts are already out on the table,” Rob began, thinking out loud in the hope that an idea might occur to either of them. “Could I write about any suspects—that is, people questioned about their whereabouts at the time of the crime?”
“Okay, let’s think about that,” Eddie countered. “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. They have been contacted by the Sausalito Police, who requested an interview upon their return.’ I don’t think that’s been reported on and that should stir up some conversation.”
“I’ll use that for sure. What else?”
“You could also note that Warren had an elevated blood alcohol level at the time of his death. Police assume that he was entertaining a guest in the hours before he was killed and that no one yet has come forward to say that they were that guest or to suggest they know who that guest was.”
“Can I mention that you interviewed Ray Sirica?”
“That’s fine. 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 the police interviewed him?” Rob asked.
“Just mention that Marin County Sheriff Department Detective Eddie Austin was seen entering his home, and he’ll give that up. I didn’t pull up in front of his house and walk up to his door shielded by a cloak of invisibility.”
“True that,” Rob laughed.
“Some of Sausalito’s pinheads want to make Sirica out to be some mob syndicate guy, mostly because his last name ends in a vowel. That’s small town nonsense! Sirica is about as hard to crack as a soft boiled egg,” Eddie said with a shrug, as he took another bite of his bagel.
Rob nodded. “Okay, so what was Bradley’s blood alcohol level? And what, if anything, did it mean?”
“It doesn’t tell us much more than he had enough alcohol in him to get a DUI from Sausalito’s finest, which isn’t very much, as you and I learned as teenagers. But it was not at a level 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 that the apparent suffocation was 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-plus, it could certainly have slowed his fight-or-flight response, if he ever responded at all.
“You could also say that minus his hands, we have no evidence of whether he scratched at his killer’s arms, but as I told you before, any real struggle would have led to at least some bruising to the face, and there was none.”
“So then, I can say that police suspect that Bradley’s hands were severed, most likely as an attempt by the killer to send what, at this point, is an undetermined message or to eliminate incriminating evidence?”
“It’s a free press, Rob. Say anything you want. Just do me the favor of passing by me any quotes you’re attributing to me.”
“Of course. And could it have been something more potent than wine that Bradley was drinking?”
“Interesting you should ask that. 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 slipped into Bradley’s drink that would make killing him that much easier, they confirmed that the only identifiable element in the alcohol they found carried the chemical signature of wine.”
“Could they still get accurate results, given that his body was not examined for approximately twenty-four hours after his death?”
“Yes, because he was outside on a mild Sausalito afternoon, and on a back porch that
