Warren’s chest tightened as Alma dug in.
“Eight months from today we hold our annual Fine Arts Gala. To have that man hosting such an important event won’t do! I’m sure you agree!”
At this point, Warren could do nothing but agree. Sounding like a commuter chasing a departing Sausalito ferry early on a workday morning, he breathlessly murmured, “Oh, you’re right Alma. I should have thought of that!”
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 cue that it was time for him to leave.
He lifted his rumpled self from the comfortable wingback and silently bid farewell.
“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.” Warren had never heard such resolve in Alma’s voice.
As his car journeyed down the steep road leading back to his home, Warren thought about what had just transpired. In his experience, gossip was rarely intended to turn into action. Instead, it was a flavor, like nectarine juice in a red wine sauce. Savored briefly on the tongue and remembered only by its afterglow.
Chapter Three
Rob Timmons’ weekly routine would have exhausted most people, but it was a schedule he had grown accustomed to in the years since his purchase of The Sausalito Standard.
Historically, this community tabloid newspaper came out weekly, arriving in mailboxes every Wednesday. But a year after buying the paper for a surprisingly small sum from the estate of its founder, Rob struck upon an idea. If he left the newspaper’s center twelve pages intact, but put a different four-page “wrap” of local news around each week’s edition, he could significantly expand his readership and, more importantly, his value to advertisers. Thereby, as just one example, The Peninsula Standard, covering the neighboring towns of Tiburon and Belvedere, arrived every week with specific news stories and social columns like “Belvedere Buzz” and “Tiburon Talk” unique to those towns. Over the next two years, Rob expanded into Mill Valley, and then started a fourth edition in Ross Valley, which covered the central Marin towns of Ross, San Anselmo, Larkspur, and Corte Madera.
One thing all of these communities had in common was that each held some of the highest family income zip codes in America. Neighborhoods where the listing of a home with a price of one million dollars or less was considered a “fixer-upper.”
To the untrained eye, it may have seemed an impossible task for a news organization run by two full-time individuals: Rob, and his full-time editorial assistant/production manager, Holly Cross.
For community news coverage, Rob recruited a host of mostly retired or semi-retired volunteer contributors. The local stories they covered rarely received any attention from one of the Bay Area’s major news outlets. Nevertheless, local readers appreciated knowing about road closures or the planned opening of new bike-only lanes, along with the consideration of new taxes and property assessment changes. Each community edition also needed to cover society news such as birthdays, anniversaries, births, graduations, and charitable events. Sylvia Stokes reported on the social scene in Tiburon, Ed Dondero worked Mill Valley, and Cassie Crenshaw covered the towns of Ross Valley.
Although just 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’d grown 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 only fire truck alongside his fire chief dad. At one time, the family even had a Dalmatian named Smoke.
Two-thirds of Marin County is dedicated to local, state, or federal parkland, much of which Rob explored on foot as a boy. It was an endless maze of wooded paths, many lined with giant redwoods, and dramatic trails which crisscrossed the coastal headlands and peaked at several hundred feet before sloping down into a canyon, empty river beds, or the Pacific's edge. 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. Except for occasional blues and rock concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that were half music, half outdoor pot parties, Rob and Eddie, like their parents and neighbors, tended to stay on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Compared to the city’s excitement, Rob’s hometown had a slow and lazy rhythm in which each day blended quietly into the next. The summer frequently brought the chilly air that settled over much of the San Francisco peninsula from June through September. Most days were sunny and cool. Winters could occasionally bring 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 stretched for approximately a mile along a waterfront street called Bridgeway where, during the peak of summer, visitors by car, bus, ferry, and bicycle overwhelmed the small town.
Awed by an idyllic location that combined houses perched on hills above boats bobbing gently in its harbor, with a verdant mountain to the north and sparkling city lights across the azure bay to the south, people who visited or settled in Sausalito
