The Gossiping Gourmet: (A Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 1) (Murder in Marin Mysteries) Read Online Free Page B

which covered the central Marin County communities of Kentfield,
Ross, San Anselmo, Greenbrae, Larkspur, and Corte Madera, all of which were
crowded into a relatively small part of the central portion of the county known
as Ross Valley. The one thing all ten of these communities had in common: each
was among the highest family-income zip codes in America—in other words,
neighborhoods where the listing of a home with a price of one million dollars
or less was viewed as a “fixer upper.” 
    To the untrained eye, it may
have seemed an impossible task for a news organization essentially run by two
individuals—in this case, Rob, with the support of his full time
assistant/production manager, Holly Cross.
    For community news coverage,
Rob recruited a host of mostly retired or semi-retired volunteer contributors
in all the areas of the county in which the weekly Standard appeared.
Local stories were rarely subjects that received any attention from one of the
Bay Area’s major news outlets. Nevertheless, there were local readers who
greatly appreciated knowing about the planned opening of new bike only lanes,
road repair, and construction projects that would cause a detour somewhere
along the route of their daily commute, or interviews with a new commission
member espousing on ways in which they plan to enrich the lives of their
community. Most importantly, homeowners wanted to know about new school and
construction bonds before they appeared in the form of additional property
taxes from the county assessor’s office.
    Although not yet
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 grew 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 one fire truck alongside his dad, Sausalito’s fire chief. At one
time, the family even had a Dalmatian named Smoke.
    Two-thirds of Marin County is
state or federal parkland, much of which Rob explored as a boy on foot. It was
an endless maze of wooded paths and dramatic trails that crisscrossed the
grassy headlands and peaked at several hundred feet before sloping down into a
canyon, deserted river beds, or the edge of the Pacific. 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—Mill Valley, Corte Madera, Larkspur, San Anselmo, and Fairfax. With
the exception of occasional blues and rock concerts in Golden Gate Park that
were half music, half open-air pot parties, Robbie, like his parents and their
neighbors, tended to stay on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
    Compared to the excitement of
San Francisco, Rob’s hometown had a slow and lazy rhythm in which each day
blended quietly into the next. The summer brought some of the chilly air that
annually invaded the San Francisco peninsula from June through September; the
days were mostly idyllically sunny and mild. Winters could bring scattered days
of dark clouds and occasionally 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 stretches for approximately a mile along a street called Bridgeway where,
during the peak summer travel season, camera-toting visitors packed the town to
capacity.
    Awed by an idyllic location
that combined houses perched on hills above the boats bobbing gently in its
harbor, with a verdant mountain to the north and sparking city lights across
the azure bay to the south, many who came to Sausalito were immediately
entranced. Others found life in Sausalito maddeningly peaceful and retreated back
into livelier San Francisco