“How many are there?”
“Bradley fed on the minutiae of life in Sausalito. I suspect he either knew too much or said too much about one of his neighbors. Two-thirds of the town is looking for his or her favorite suspect, which, as we discussed, is fine with me. The more people convinced that Randolph is the killer the better off we are. We don’t want to do anything to spook the real killer into pulling a disappearing act.”
“Given the strength the killer needed, I don’t suppose there’s any chance that the killer is a female?” Rob asked.
“Not unless the killer is a left-handed female bodybuilder. I don’t know any women in Sausalito that fit that description. Do you? The longer the townies keep their focus on Randolph, the better I like it.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“I need you to be my go-to guy for in-depth information on our victim. The more we can learn about Bradley’s life, the closer we might get to identifying his killer. Right now, you’re on good terms with Alma and her gang of busybodies. Tell them you’re planning a retrospective on the life and times of Warren Bradley. Once you start digging into his past, hopefully some actionable information will fall into place. There are only a handful of people like Karin, you, and me, who grew up in Sausalito, living their whole lives in that tiny fishbowl. The vast majority of people in most Marin communities arrived ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Bradley came to Sausalito approximately twenty-five years ago. Bottom line, Rob, we need to know more about Bradley’s life before he showed up in town.”
“I’m fine with all this, if you think I can help,” Rob assured Eddie. “You’re right that there are a lot of people in town who would string up Randolph and be done with it.”
“Fortunately for Randolph, he might appear to be the obvious killer, but this isn’t the Wild West anymore.”
Rob chuckled. “That’s a good thing for me as well. Nosy, pushy journalists, asking too many questions, didn’t have a long life expectancy in the early years of California.”
“Speaking of nosy, how long did Warren write his column for The Standard?”
“About six years.”
“Can you take the time to go back and give those old columns a closer look? I’m sure Randolph isn’t the only one who would have liked to murder that infamous busybody. We’ll probably follow a lot of leads that go nowhere, but hopefully, we can pull one thread that causes this whole thing to unravel.”
“But what about those missing hands, Eddie? What the hell was that about?”
“Trust me, pal. When we find the killer, the mystery of the missing hands will fall into place.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rob was excited about Eddie’s request. He was right to ask that everything, at least for now, be kept between the two of them.
“If there are any leaks, it could spoil our efforts and put us back at square one,” Eddie reminded him. “We have to keep this from everyone: even, Karin, Sharon, and that super sleuth assistant of yours, Holly.”
While it was true that most of Rob’s work would bore a crime reporter to distraction, he wasn’t a complete stranger to the persistent and patient work of investigative reporting. He had uncovered several cases of bribery and misappropriation of funds in city and county agencies. Two recent examples: a Tiburon council member taking kickbacks in exchange for his vote; and a Mill Valley council member provided with the use of a Lake Tahoe vacation home by a local architect whose projects she consistently voted to support.
Rob began his task by explaining to Holly that he was doing a retrospective on Warren. "Please e-mail me his entire file of columns."
"Are you sure, Rob?" Holly asked in surprise. "That's a lot of garbage to search through!"
"Don't worry. I haven't lost my mind. I want to scan through Bradley's work and get a better feel for what he wrote."
"Okay, boss. It's your call."
During his spare time in the evenings, and over the next few workdays, Rob reviewed all of Warren's two hundred and ninety-six “Heard About Town” columns. Once again, it stirred Rob's regrets as to why he had published Warren’s column for so long. He realized, however, that it had been a marriage of convenience, similar to arrangements he had made with other retired seniors in his small corps of community reporters. Fortunately, his other writers did not have Warren's love of gossip, or the desire to settle personal scores with a variety of fellow citizens.
Warren, however, took cattiness to extremes, which might have been a reflection of the uniquely sharp elbows found in Sausalito's political and social scene.
Most of Warren’s items and columns dealt with his musings about “modern day life” or his mentions of special birthdays. In this regard, he never missed those of Alma Samuels, Bea Snyder, Ethel Landau, Robin Mitchell, or other “Ladies of Liberty Superstars." He faithfully provided reporting of various Sausalito Women’s League events—notably the annual holiday follies—and coverage of the endless game of musical chairs for seats on the town’s commissions, committees, and the grand prizes: the city council, planning commission, and design review board. All of it was grist for Bradley's gossip mill.
Now and then, Warren unsheathed the cutting edge of his words, turning his column into a weapon as opposed to a platform for idle chatter.
In the column’s second year, he aimed his fire at a recently elected
