He gave a long laugh and said, “You can’t give a guy a hand when he needs it most?”
Holly shook her head adamantly. “I’d rather appear small-minded with hands, than broadminded without them.”
In remarkably little time Warren Bradley’s memory was purged from the carefully crafted histories of Sausalito.
“He deceived us!” Alma declared. She forbade the mention of his name in her presence. In fact, she and the Ladies of Liberty never spoke again of the man she had once greatly admired. The contributions gathered for Warren’s memorial statue were returned to the donors without a note of thanks or explanation.
Just days after Chris Harding’s arrest, Grant and Barbara Randolph came back to their lovely cottage by the bay.
Within two weeks, they received invitations to a half-dozen gatherings. It was surprising and gratifying for both of them to witness their resurrected social standing inside Sausalito’s smart set.
Nevertheless, a year after Warren Bradley’s death, the Randolphs quietly placed their home on the market and left Sausalito for the more tranquil and private life of Manhattan.
Two months later news raced through town that a dot-com CEO, Patricia Smith, and her husband, Mario, had purchased the Randolph home.
On the week they arrived and settled in, Oscar and Clarice Anderson came to welcome their new neighbors bringing a plate of cherry fudge brownies.
The successful young couple invited them in. When Patricia Smith took her first bite of the heavenly brownies introduced to Clarice by the Gossiping Gourmet, she exclaimed, “These are delicious! Do you mind giving me the recipe?”
Clarice hesitated and considered her response. For just a brief moment, the image of Warren standing at her doorstep holding his brownies, anxious for her to share what she and Oscar knew about the Randolphs, flashed through her mind.
Finally, Clarice smiled and said, “I’m happy to, my dear. It’s an old recipe that has been in my family for years.”
THE END
Thank You!
Dear Reader,
I want to thank you in advance for your appreciation of my novels. If you enjoy them, I welcome you to leave a review online—no matter how short—specifically on the bookstore’s website.
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—Martin Brown
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Read an excerpt here
CHAPTER ONE
A few minutes after five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, near the end of another busy week, Rob Timmons, publisher of the Standard Community Newspapers, and Holly Cross, his production manager, were both surprised to hear the office's doorbell ring.
“Who the heck is that?” Holly snapped, more than ready to get out of the office and start her weekend.
“Whoever it is, I hope they’re in and out of here in a hurry,” Rob replied. “We're supposed to meet Eddie for drinks at Smitty’s in less than thirty minutes.”
“I better go take a look.”
Holly rushed past Rob and looked down the steep staircase from the top floor landing of the two-story Victorian walk-up that housed the newspaper. “It’s Sylvia Stokes. What do you suppose she wants?”
Sylvia, a tall, lean woman, who at sixty-four was approximately thirty years older than either Holly or Rob, was the community reporter for the Standard’s Peninsula edition.
“Well, buzz her in,” Rob replied. “Let’s find out.”
Hearing the buzzer, Sylvia pushed the door opened. Then, gripping the aging wood banister, stepped energetically up the steep, dimly lit stairs.
“What’s up?” Holly asked as Sylvia hurried past.
“Terrible news I’m afraid!” Sylvia replied ominously. “I was coming over the bridge, on my way home from the city, when I got a call from my husband, Jack. Oh, it’s just so sad!”
“Well, don’t keep us in the dark!” Holly prodded. Her appetite for hard news was exceeded only by her hunger for local gossip.
Rob sat down at his desk expecting to hear bad news.
“You both know the name William Adams, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Rob said. “He and his wife Fran are on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. Highly successful venture capitalists. They live up near the top of Belvedere, on Golden Gate Avenue.”
“Yes, exactly, well there's been a terrible accident.”
“Oh my God!” Holly exclaimed breathlessly. “Are they dead?”
“No, not both—just Fran! She died in a skiing accident up at Heavenly, not far from their new home on Lake Tahoe.”
“That’s pretty sad,” Rob said. “How old was she?”
“Fran and William were both the same age, fifty-five.”
“Yikes! Any details on how the accident happened?” Holly asked.
“From what Jack heard from one of his friends over at Berkeley, Fran went missing yesterday near sunset when she went off course on a downhill run. The ski patrol didn’t find her until noon today. She collided with a tree. Apparently, she died instantly. Jack told me it’s called blunt force something.”
“Blunt force trauma,” Rob said softly. "In this case the result of a body in motion meeting an immovable object.”
“Wow, that’s so sad. I imagine they’ll have a service for her either in Tiburon or Belvedere?” Holly asked.
"They were both members of the congregation Jack and I have been part of for years, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere. I assume that’s where they’ll hold the service."
“How well do you know them?” Rob asked.
“Jack and William met because both are active in a UC Berkeley alumni group, but we’ve never been close. As you can imagine, we travel in different circles, but we're certainly acquaintances, neighbors, even friends of a sort.”
“They have any kids?” Holly asked.
“No. I suppose they never found the time to start a family. They invited us to a big twentieth-anniversary party they threw at their home. That was just four months ago,” Sylvia said as she was again caught by the realization that lives can change in an instant. “They were both corporate attorneys who worked with high-tech companies and became investors in many of those firms. At the party, they explained that they had
