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 the past few days, all of which ended with a promise that there would be much more in the Wednesday print 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.”
“Why the hell would I want to kill Warren Bradley?”
“I know you wouldn’t. But in any normal investigation, your story would have been analyzed for discrepancies.”
“What are you getting at?”
“It’s simple, Rob. You should do a feature on finding Bradley. It tells the readers that, not only was he a contributor to the paper, but that you cared enough about him to want to learn why he vanished and missed the deadline for his weekly column. Particularly after he called to tell you he was in the process of completing it and promising you that it would get to you by your deadline. It ties you into the story in a personal way no other reporter, or news organization, can claim. It also is a great set-up for running Bradley’s last column—those final words he promised to send you, but never had the chance to deliver.”
“I have to admit, detective, you can be one smart newsman when you want to be.”
“I love you too, pal. Now, get busy and make Miss Alma proud!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rob came home to an empty house. Karin had left a note, with her signature Hershey’s Kiss sitting next to her Xs and Os, explaining that she’d taken their two children down to Dunphy Park to throw fishing lines out into Richardson Bay.
As always, it was unlikely that the children would catch anything with their kiddie rod-and-reel sets they had gotten for Christmas. Still, at ages five and three, it provided them with a two-hour diversion while Karin caught up on this week’s copy of People.
There was no better time to tackle the first print article in what Rob suspected might be several stories on the Bradley case, particularly before an arrest was made and charges filed.
Rob was troubled by the fact that many homicides go unsolved. Approximately sixty-two percent of cases are cleared and thirty-eight percent go unsolved. Rob hoped Bradley’s murder would not be one of those cases that stayed open. In a town where secrets have a remarkably short shelf life, he could not bring himself to believe that the name of Warren’s killer would not surface in the days or weeks to come.
Surely, somewhere in town, someone knew something that would reveal critical clues. Small towns seem to work that way. Eventually, the whole story should begin to unravel and the killer exposed. It was a hope Rob clung to. Regardless of how engaged his readers were at this point, he knew their interest would diminish with each passing week.
As Rob began writing his story, he felt a bit of guilt over a sense of happiness that came over him. He wrote stories about chili cook-off contests and school science fairs. He could not help feeling excited. As his fingers flew across his keyboard, a smile remained fixed on his face.
As Rob worked, he wondered if Warren might be alive today if he hadn’t used his column as a bully pulpit. After all, his murder wasn’t a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Random, deranged killers don’t knock on doors at the end of quiet streets and say, “It’s been ages since I’ve suffocated someone and chopped off their hands. Mind if I come in and join you for dinner?”
Rob reasoned that any guilt he felt in publishing Warren’s column was misplaced. The righteous vitriol Warren spewed in his recent columns regarding Randolph hadn’t led to his murder. If it had, as Eddie pointed out, it's unlikely that Grant would have acted in such a methodical fashion. Warren’s killer wasn’t someone who had arrived after his dinner guest departed. It was far more likely that the killer was Warren’s dinner guest.
Rob was not a betting man, but the more he thought about this mystery, the more convinced he was that Eddie’s line of reasoning made perfect sense.
When Monday’s mail was pushed through the door slot, Holly raced out to retrieve them. “Five bucks says we’re going to have a full mailbag column for our Sausalito edition this week.”
“I’m not taking that bet,” Rob shouted as Holly flew past him.
Already, a half-dozen letters had come in online, most of those tributes to the late chef. But, if Holly was right, the “blue hairs,” as she often referred to the Ladies of Liberty, would send in their comments the old fashioned way: on light pink stationery decorated with flowers on top and bottom opposite corners of the page, with a matching envelope and a postage stamp promoting some worthy cause.
Holly sorted through the letters like a kid throwing packages around on Christmas morning.
“Oooh, here’s one from Alma!” Holly said as she slipped a letter opener under the envelope’s seal. “Ten bucks says she and her pals are already griping about the Sausalito PD not nabbing Warren’s killer yet.”
“I'm not betting against that either.”
Holly quickly scanned Alma’s missive, then exclaimed, “I knew this would be good!”
“Okay, give it over. What does Sausalito’s grand dame have to say from her lofty perch?”
Holly’s eyes quickly scanned the second of two pages, handwritten on rose-colored stationery in perfect penmanship in deep blue ink that contrasted dramatically against the sheet. “Ha,” Holly declared, as she slapped down the pages on the corner of Rob’s desk and said, “Here, read it yourself! I think you’ve got a new admirer.”
“Oh, great. Now what?” Rob
