IN BOOK 6 OF THE MURDER IN MARIN SERIES:
After a quarter-century at the heart of Sausalito’s daily life, Mary Anderson had long been thought of as a permanent fixture in the life of a town famous for beautiful vistas and nasty politics. Admired by a narrow majority and despised by a vocal minority, Anderson's grip on power was guided by her oft-stated advice: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer!"
Thought to have died tragically in a landslide, her secret world begins to unravel with the discovery that her death was anything but accidental. Local newspaper publisher Rob Timmons and his Gal Friday, Holly Cross, gather clues while Sheriff's Detective Eddie Austin investigates a few not-the-usual suspects capable of "Queen Mary's" murder.
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—Martin Brown
EXCERPT
CHAPTER 1
On the morning following a powerful overnight storm, Rob Timmons looked out his bedroom window, anxious to see what debris might have blown onto his deck.
Nothing serious, he quickly concluded—the usual small branches, along with a scattering of leaves. Given how loud the rain was beating against the windows and the roof, he imagined the scene would have been far worse.
The cozy home he shared with his wife, Karin, and two children, Micah and Alice, was passed down from his grandfather to his parents. Rob's family were the third and fourth generations to inhabit a property built for twenty-two thousand dollars and now worth infinitely more.
From his home, constructed on the first of several hills that climb up toward the Marin Headlands, Rob could see the impact of the storm on the Sausalito "flats." The flats consisted of two parallel streets: one called Caledonia Street, the other, Bridgeway. The latter had been named after the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1938, which connected Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties to San Francisco.
Rob was pleased to discover that the storm’s impact appeared to be minimal throughout the area.
A habitually early riser, Rob grabbed his cellphone when it began to chirp loudly. Not wanting to rouse the family on a Sunday morning, he walked toward the kitchen, the farthest point from the home's three bedrooms. Looking at the phone's display, Rob said softly, "I thought you like to sleep in on Sundays!"
"I do," replied Eddie Austin, a childhood friend of Rob's, who was the lead investigative detective for the Marin County Sheriff's Department. “Sharon and Aaron are sound asleep, and at six-thirty on a Sunday morning I usually would be too. But something’s come up."
"I’m all ears." As always, Rob was anxious to hear anything newsworthy in a town that often had too little news to hold the attention of the readers of his weekly community paper.
"I'm getting in the car to head over to Hurricane Gulch; there was a slide overnight that took out a house. I thought you might want to join me."
"Anyone hurt?"
"Don't know yet. The fire department and Sausalito police are there now. More importantly, the house that went down the hill was Mary Anderson's."
"As in, our esteemed mayor?" Rob asked.
"You got it, pal."
"Absolutely I want to go!"
"I thought you'd be interested. I'll swing by your place in a few minutes."
"Great! Let me throw on some clothes. I'll see you in five."
Rob raced back to his bedroom. As quietly as possible he jumped into a pair of pants, he had tossed over a chair the night before. He grabbed an old flannel shirt from his closet and a comfortable gray sweatshirt to go over it. He pushed into his sneakers using his index finger as a shoehorn, not wanting to take the time to unlace and re-lace them before racing out the front door.
Eddie pulled up seconds after Rob quietly closed the front door behind him.
CHAPTER 2
"Before you called, I was looking out my living room window to see how much damage the downpour and winds did overnight. It didn't look like we got hit too bad. At least that's what I thought until you told me about the slide.”
"I was thinking the same thing driving over to pick you up. But Hurricane Gulch has always been prone to slides. It takes the brunt of most of our storms."
"Funny how it's such a short distance south of us, yet storms whip through the gulch like nowhere else in town."
"It gets a bad slide about once every ten years,” Eddie reminded Rob. “Some small, some big, and on rare occasions, one that’s deadly. Do you remember the slide that happened when we were kids—the house on Crescent Avenue, where what's-her-name died?"
"Yeah, I remember. But what was her name?"
Eddie thought for a moment: "Mrs. Simmons!”
"Yep, you’re right, Simmons." Rob nodded. “She had just come home fifteen minutes earlier from a concert she attended with a couple of friends in San Francisco. They dropped her off a little before eleven. They think she must have stepped into her kitchen to make herself a cup of tea."
Eddie nodded. "I remember it was one of those pounding winter rains that came on top of two weeks of steady rainfall. Always a dangerous combination."
"Very much like the weather we've had this rain season,” Rob added. “Long soaking rains. Get enough without a break of several days so the moisture has a chance to soak in, and the hill can give way."
"I remember people talking about how sad it was. Three-quarters of her house was nearly untouched by the slide. But the kitchen and utility room were smashed like a freight train had slammed into them." Eddie noted with a shutter. "What a terrible way to go.
“Just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sure you see a lot of that in your line of work."
Eddie nodded as Rob's mind went into overdrive imagining the shock waves that would quickly passthrough Sausalito if the city’s long-serving mayor had met the same fate as the widow Simmons. "Wow…Mary Anderson! If this slide took her out? That, Eddie, would be one hell of a story!"
"Don't get too excited, Newsboy. I know how you must be dreaming up headlines right now, but perhaps Madam Mayor had the good fortune to spend the night at a friend's house."
"I can't help but get excited. Sausalito's a town where the closure of a downtown burger joint could be my lead story.”
"What do you mean, 'could be?'" Eddie asked with a snort. "Bridgeway Burgers closed up because of two consecutive years of slow summer tourist seasons, that was your lead story just a few weeks ago."
"In my defense, that place was not only popular with tourists, but a lot of locals went there as well."
"I suppose you get a pass then. With local editions of The Standard coming out every week in Sausalito, Mill Valley, the Tiburon/Belvedere Peninsula, and Ross Valley, that's a lot of ink chasing too few stories," Eddie said with a shrug. "Let's just say for you and your weekly, the closing of a burger joint wasn't one of your finest moments."
"I won’t argue the point. But listen, Eddie, if Mary Anderson, the mean queen of Sausalito politics for twenty-five plus years, is lying dead under tons of mud…there's a story that will stop people in their tracks."
"Going for The Pulitzer Prize on this one, Rob?"
"I wouldn't go that far. But increasing readership and advertising revenue never hurts the cause of a free press."
Eddie parked his car on Main Street. "We better walk up from here, Rob. Between the fire trucks and the heavy equipment, they'll be looking to bring in, I don't need to throw another obstacle in their path by parking too close to the action."
The downpours of the previous night had given way to scattered rays of sunshine and the first pleasant morning the town had enjoyed in over a week. Sausalito, which might go six or more months with barely a drop of rain, can have two, three, or more months of nearly relentless winter rains. This is particularly true on the south end of this small city.
Many of these rainy days bring little more than a persistent cold mist. But occasionally days of pelting rains can cause the soft soils along the ragged edges of the 101 Freeway, which sits atop a ridge of the Marin Headlands, to crumble. Most often, these slides are merely a scattering of some loose rocks and soil that do little harm to the homes below the ridge. But once every ten or twenty years, a large chunk tears free along the relatively short distance between the Robin Williams Rainbow Tunnel and the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. Soil, rocks, and vegetation then plunge past the homes of Sausalito Boulevard, Crescent Avenue, and Lower Crescent, bringing with it an avalanche of mud, rocks, and trees that gains significant force as it increases in speed. When this happens no person, car, or house in its path is safe.
As Eddie and Rob walked steadily up the hill, it became increasingly apparent that this had not been one of the fortunate times when a slide passed without causing significant damage. From a higher vantage point, the two longtime friends got their first glimpse of the horrifying scene.
"Wow, Eddie. If Mary Anderson was home when this hit, it's hard to imagine she survived!"
"You're right, Rob. The queen bee of Sausalito politics might have met her maker. Feel free to use that line in your story if that turns out to be the case. Just don't quote me."
"I wouldn't worry about that," Rob chuckled.
* * *
A short time later, Rob and Eddie were talking to Bill Vogel, who’d succeeded Rob's dad as Sausalito's fire chief over a decade earlier. They stood on a parking deck just above Crescent Avenue, just one house over from the gaping hole in the hillside that the slide had created.
"It's remarkable to see the force of one of these slides, and the damage they can do," Eddie said, awestruck by what he was seeing.
"Thank God they happen rarely," Vogel replied. "Just look at this! Mature trees toppled like saplings, and a home cut in two. Two-thirds of the home lying upside down in the backyard of a house on Crescent Avenue, the other third about sixty feet uphill, still clinging to its foundation. It looks like something a tornado could do.”
"That's Mayor Anderson's house, although it’s hardly recognizable," Rob said. “Over the years, I’ve been to several receptions at her home. This is just unbelievable.”
"You're right, Rob. It’s her house, alright." Vogel replied. "It was built by her father. Both of them lived there until he went into an assisted living facility many years ago."
"I’m guessing he's been gone over ten years now," Rob added.
"That sounds about right," Vogel added with a nod. "Nasty old fellow as I remember."
"That was certainly the consensus of those who knew Gus Anderson," Rob replied with a smile.
Eddie listened without comment, looking down on the wreckage of the house lying on its roof, partially swallowed by mud that looked to be six feet deep. "Has there been any attempt to get into the half of the house that got sheared off?"
"Not yet Eddie. Too dangerous at this point. The remaining portion of the structure is not at all stable. Two fire and rescue units are coming over from the city. SFFD has got some rescue and recovery apparatus we don't have."
"I imagine someone has reached out to Mary Anderson?" Rob asked.
"We called the home and cell numbers we have for her. Nothing," Vogel said with a shrug. "If she's in that wreckage, I don't like her chances. Perhaps the most hopeful sign is that the half of the house that escaped relatively unscathed includes Mayor Anderson's bedroom, so perhaps she had a late night and is sleeping through our attempts to reach her, or her phone is out of reach, or turned off."
"That's a glimmer of hope, I suppose," Eddie said.
"On the other hand, she would not be the first person to fall asleep in a recliner on a Saturday night while watching television," Rob added.
"You're right, Rob. I’ve done that once or twice myself," Vogel replied as he patted Rob's shoulder. "We'll just have to wait and see."
"Whatever happens, you and your team are in for a long day and possibly a long night as well," Eddie said. "We should get out of the chief's way, Rob, and let him do his work."
"Nothing we're facing at the moment is going to be easy, or quickly resolved. I'm happy we're getting backup from San Francisco. Just surveying the wreckage of the house down below, the recovery effort is going to be a long haul. That much seems certain."
"I assume you also requested a location search of her cellphone?" Eddie asked.
"We did. The last call was made from the mayor's home shortly before seven o'clock last night, approximately nine hours before the hill gave way."
"That's not good," Rob said, instantly regretting his blurting out the obvious.
"Rob, when your dad was fire chief, I often heard him say we have to resist the temptation to get ahead of ourselves. This is going to be one of those times. We'll just have to be patient and take this one step at a time.”
* * *
Eddie and Rob walked back down the hill in silence. Both were turning up their collars as a chilled wind started to stir and a light rain began to fall. They watched as they stepped to avoid small rocks and other debris that might cause them to slip and at best embarrass themselves, or at worst sustain an injury.
As soon as they shut the car's doors and Eddie turned the key in the ignition, Rob asked, "I suppose it’s possible that Queen Mary's time in power has come to an end?"
"Funny you should say that. Looking down on the ruined half of Anderson's house, I kept thinking what a dramatic end this would be to her long reign if indeed she's buried under a ton of mud. Either way, you're going to have a big story for this week’s edition."
"I've got to tell Holly about this."
"Rob, it's seven forty-five! She might shoot you for banging on her door before eight on a Sunday morning."
"After all the nasty things she has said about Mary Anderson over the years, she might shoot me if she finds out I knew about this and didn't come tell her."
"The old damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't conundrum," Eddie said with a half-smile.
"Exactly! But if there's one thing Holly hates more than an early wake-up call on a Sunday, it's not being one of the first to know about a big story. And at this moment, I don’t know if we’ve ever had a bigger story than this."
(c) 2021 Martin Brown. All rights reserved.
CONTESTANTS
Andrea J
Angela AT
Angela H
Ann S
Barbara DeM
Barbara H
Ben L
Brenda M
Bonnie D
Candice R
Carol B
Crystal B
Dawn B
David T
Deb B
Donald S
Francie P
Eileen M
Eva D
Jan T
James L
Jamie G
Judith R
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Kenneth J
Lynn P
Loretta K
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Marilyn W
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Peter B
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Rexine McF
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Ron S
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Sheryl S
Sue H
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Syl J
Tanya L
Tranna E
Tyler J
Robert G
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Sheryl S
Tanya S
Victoria P
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