Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa - Jersey Girl 01 - New Math Is Murder (7 page)

“Colleen?” Neil, my almost ex, said.

Though I knew they lived in the building, I never expected to see Neil and Theda on their own turf. My fantasies ran more along the lines of him coming to the house in the middle of the night and pounding on the front door, declaring his undying love for me. And I, ten pounds lighter and happily single once again …

In fact, Neil would have been nuts to beat down my door. Theda Oates, in her flowing, periwinkle garb and matching silk pumps, looked positively regal. They were both dressed to kill, on their way out for a night on the town. In comparison, I looked like the leftover junk brought out to the curb after a garage sale.

“Great,” I whispered under my breath.

“Colleen? What are you doing here?” Neil asked me.

“She’s working,” Rhodes volunteered when I failed to answer.

He punched the lobby button, and the car gave a slight shudder as it began to descend.

“Why would you be working so late at night?” Neil asked, eyeing Rhodes but directing the question to me.

“Hot story,” Ken answered with a wink.

I gave Rhodes a grateful smile and noticed he had never bothered to button his shirt. Theda Oates got an eyeful of Ken’s washboard abs. I hoped she made a mental comparison to Neil’s mid-life-crisis paunch and was eating her heart out.

“Who’s with the children?” Neil asked in a newly-acquired, upper-crust tone.

“Certainly not you, Neil,” I answered.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Rhodes led me to the building’s entry, where the doorman waited to be of service.

“I’ll be in touch, Colleen,” Neil called out after us.

I hurried to my car. My hands shook so badly that I dropped my keys twice.

Rhodes picked up the key ring from the ground and unlocked the door. “What a personable guy, Colleen! So warm and friendly.”

“Isn’t he something special?”

“What did you ever see in him in the first place?” Rhodes asked.

“I saw happily ever after.”

Rhodes laughed. “Well, so much for that! Be careful driving home. It’s dark down here.”

I remembered the little boy who got knocked off his skateboard by a hit-and-run driver just a few weeks before on another dark Tranquil Harbor night. “I will.”

“And stop by the office before you interview that teacher. Let’s go over some questions I’d like you to work into the conversation.”

“I’ll stop by on Monday.”

I drove home more curious than ever about Ken Rhodes. There was money somewhere in his background, that much was obvious. He might have been a hard-nosed reporter at a large daily newspaper at some point in his life, but he seemed too intense for our quiet suburban town.

I wondered if Meredith had been right after all with her hit-man reference.

8

Speculation on the Whitley murder ran amok at the
Town Crier
offices. Beat reporters, desperate for a story, haunted the county prosecutor’s office and were positive Jennifer Whitley had killed her husband.

“I don’t think so, unless she hit him in the head with a frying pan when he complained about dinner,” I told Margaret Allen, the seasoned reporter assigned to cover Tranquil Harbor, Cliffwood Beach, and nearby Keyport.

Margaret set me straight. “The police found a baseball bat in the dumpster near the concession stand down at the field when they were looking for Whitley’s personal effects. His briefcase is still missing. So are his car keys. There was blood on the bat and a few strands of light brown hair. How much do you want to bet they match up to Whitley?”

“Death by Louisville Slugger. How dramatic,” I said, wondering why no one had bothered to tell me about the murder weapon.

“A nice, well-balanced metal bat. The kind the kids use,” she told me.

I knew that would narrow down Ron Haver’s list of suspects.

I roamed the newsroom and jumped from department to department to conduct an impromptu poll. Paying and Receiving, not the most imaginative of thinkers, thought Whitley’s murder was a random act of violence. Armchair detectives in the guise of copy editors were convinced a spurned lover did Tranquil Harbor’s Casanova in. Willy Rojas, along with Calypso Trent in advertising, agreed with the beat reporters: it had to be Jennifer Whitley. Meredith Mancini thought Whitley’s sparkling personality drove a Harbor Regional faculty member to homicide.

Mark Doran, the sports editor in the cubicle next to Meredith’s, felt compelled to add his two cents worth. “Maybe Jennifer Whitley did it for the insurance money.”

“What insurance money?” I asked. “Harbor teachers don’t have much in the way of life insurance. I hear it’s something like a year and a half of their first year’s salary. Do you know how low a first-year salary is for a teacher in our school district?”

“She probably had a separate plan that insured the guy to the gills,” he said.

“And hit him in the head with a bat and left him in the woods to collect on it?” I asked.

“She didn’t kill him there,” Doran said. “That guy was dumped.”

“Jennifer Whitley isn’t big enough to carry a body half a mile into the woods.”

“Then she had an accomplice. Maybe her boyfriend helped her.”

“What boyfriend?” I asked.

Willy Rojas joined in. “Think about it, Colleen. Her marriage was miserable, she wore a lavender suit to her murdered husband’s memorial service, and she’s more composed than any wife has a right to be under the circumstances. If your husband suddenly turned up dead, wouldn’t it rattle you?”

“If I got to speak at Neil’s memorial service, I’d be turning cartwheels across the floor,” I said.

Ken Rhodes came up the aisle with a coffee mug in his hand. “Move along, people. We have a paper to publish.”

I followed Rhodes back to his office and took my usual chair. “Did you know about the baseball bat?”

“I did,” he said.

“And you didn’t even think to tell me about it?”

He put the mug aside. “We just found out this morning. I’m waiting for the test results on the hair and blood.”

“How did Margaret Allen find out?” I asked.

“She’s a beat reporter. They have their sources.”

I thought Rhodes might have considered the information important enough to pass on to me. “You could have called me. If you don’t share leads with me, I can’t possibly do my job. The entire newsroom knows about the bat. I’m writing the column, yet nobody thought to tell me.”

“You’re right,” he conceded. “But we only found out about this a short time ago. And we can’t publish anything until the police confirm …”

“How can I write about Whitley without even knowing about the murder weapon?”

“You’re whining, Colleen.”

“I’m not whining. I’m making a point.”

“You’re making noise. The next time I get information, I’ll pass it on to you immediately.”

Satisfied with what would be as close to an apology as I’d ever get from Ken Rhodes, I took out a notepad from my pocketbook. “Is there anything else you neglected to tell me?”

“Only that you should be hounding Ron Haver and anyone else you know at the prosecutor’s office for information.”

“I don’t know anyone else up there.”

“How about the local police?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Find a way to make friends with them. Do you have any old connections, prior arrests by a friendly cop, anything like that?”

“Not so much as a parking ticket,” I said. “How about Stanley Da Silva? Is there anything special you’d like me ask when I interview him?”

“Start with the usual—dates, times, the cost of his basketball camp. You can bet he’ll charge a small fortune to share his expertise. After you cover the particulars, shift to his background. Dig into his past—he had a place on the high school team when they could actually win a game. That should loosen him up, make him more talkative.”

I started writing. Ken leaned forward.

“Then drop the big one. Ask him how it feels to be the only living nominee at the high school for the Teacher of the Year award now that Whitley’s dead.” Ken laughed. “Do it right and you’ll get a couple seconds of honest unguarded reaction.”

“Yeah—and make me sound about as sensitive as Kevin Sheffield.”

“The vice principal?” Rhodes asked.

“He acted like a callous clod at the memorial service when I asked him about the faculty losing Whitley.”

“Can you talk to him, too? Find out how well he got along with Whitley?”

“How do I fit a vice principal into a basketball clinic story?” I asked.

“Did Sheffield ever play basketball? What does he think of Da Silva’s coaching skills? I know what
you
think of them.”

“The Harbor Sharks are as bad at basketball as my kid’s team is at baseball.”

Rhodes laughed. “And Da Silva helps coach them, too. I think I see a pattern here.”

I returned the pad to my pocketbook. “I’m heading up to the high school now. Maybe I can catch Da Silva during a free period. I’ll let you know about Kevin Sheffield.”

“And the Vernon woman,” Rhodes reminded me as I left his office.

Meredith called out to me when I passed her desk. “Colleen! Don’t forget Domingo’s!”

I walked back to her cubicle and pulled out my notebook. “Who’s Domingo? Did he know Jason Whitley?”

Meredith rolled her eyes. “Your restaurant review for our Cinco de Mayo theme? Domingo’s Enchilada Palace? It’s due tomorrow morning!”

I sighed. “I forgot all about it. I haven’t been there yet, and I have a million things to do.”

“I guess your new column is more important than my stories,” she sniffed.

“Can you extend the deadline for just one day, Meredith?” I pleaded. “It’s too late to get anyone to come with me. I don’t want to go there and eat all alone. I know I’m in a pitiful state, but I’m not
that
pathetic just yet.”

“I need time to edit the section in the morning before it goes to pagination tomorrow afternoon. It has to be tonight. Hey, I’m free for dinner. I’ll go with you. They have great margaritas.”

Just what I needed—a kid editor with a penchant for margaritas tagging along on a Mexican restaurant review. At least I wouldn’t have to go to Domingo’s alone. “If I didn’t have to write this place up for a story, I’d drink you under the table,” I told her.

* * *

Tranquil Harbor Regional High School was a marvel of concrete cinderblock when it was constructed in 1964. Two wings had been added in recent years, as well as a separate girls’ gym. The building consisted of numerous, maze-like hallways that led to classrooms and offices. It had been years since I roamed the hallowed halls. I found myself lost after I turned two corners in search of the teachers’ lounge.

“Mrs. Caruso?” a woman called from the open doorway of one of the smaller offices that lined a narrow corridor.

I peeked inside and knew exactly where I was—the guidance wing.

“Hi, Miss Vernon.”

“You look a little lost,” she said.

Betty Vernon kept Maybelline’s profits sky-high. Her lips were tangerine, her cheeks jaundice-bronze, and her mascara-caked lashes would make Lady Gaga green with envy. She dressed like an extraterrestrial—an orange-and-blue wrap-around dress, orange stockings, and orange sling-back heels. A polka dot scrunchie kept her unruly spiral curls in check.

“I thought this hallway led to the teachers’ lounge,” I said. “I need to speak to Mr. Da Silva.”

“I think he has a class right now.”

I seized the moment. “Are you busy, Miss Vernon?”

Betty placed a book on an already overflowing shelf and came to the door. “I have a few minutes if you’d like to discuss Sara.”

Sara’s marks had gone into a free fall over the past month or so. English, her favorite subject, had taken a nosedive. She’d failed Algebra II the previous marking period, so Jason Whitley was bound to come up without me broaching the subject.

I sat down at Betty’s desk and waited for her to bring up Sara’s file on her computer.

“I don’t understand how a bright girl like Sara could let her grades slip so low,” the guidance counselor said, referring to my daughter’s transcript. “All her grades fell off last marking period. But Sara’s problems started with Algebra II—Mr. Whitley’s class. She’s been having trouble with it since first marking period.”

“Mr. Whitley made her nervous,” I volunteered.

“He had that effect on people. Whitley was especially hard on girls, though there are other girls in Sara’s class who aren’t failing.”

“Why was he hard on girls?” I asked.

Miss Vernon looked away from the computer screen and folded her hands on the desk. Her blue polished fingernails were the height of tacky.

“He had this male superiority thing,” she told me.

“Charming guy.”

“Actually, he
was
charming. Extremely attentive in a superficial way. He held open doors for women. Pretended to listen. But he didn’t like women, didn’t think they were equal to men, and definitely didn’t think they deserved respect, despite the good manners. He was a …”

“Chauvinist?” I suggested.

“A moron.”

There wasn’t much love lost between the guidance counselor and Jason Whitley, but how much had Betty Vernon hated him? Enough to kill him? “You didn’t think much of him, Miss Vernon?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But I thought …”

“Whitley was an interesting diversion, nothing more,” she told me. “The world is filled with all kinds of interesting diversions.”

I tried to hide my shock. “I guess he wouldn’t be the first guy who
was good horizontally, but a jerk vertically.”

Betty Vernon smirked.

“I didn’t like him either,” I said.

“So I gather. I heard you threatened him at the parent-teacher conference. The whole faculty knows the story.”

Okay, my meeting with Whitley had gone a little further than a slight difference of opinion. I hinted at vigilante justice, Italian-style, if he didn’t stop picking on Sara. But it had only been a hint, not an all-out threat. My mother’s family was never in any way connected. Organized crime isn’t tough enough to deal with Stella Fleming.

“I never laid a hand on him,” I told Miss Vernon.

Betty Vernon saw through me like I was made of Saran Wrap. “Are you trying to find out if I killed Jason Whitley?”