Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa - Jersey Girl 01 - New Math Is Murder (2 page)

“No more Tee Ball for Bobby.”

“No more Tee Ball for me either,” Haver informed me. “I’m coaching the Pirates this year with Stanley Da Silva and Eugene Steiner. Bobby’s on our team. Neil never told you?”

“Neil and I have …”

“Yeah. I heard. I know all about it,” Haver said. Of course he would. We lived in one of those towns where news travels fast, especially bad news.

“He never mentioned the Little League situation,” I told him.

“Among other things apparently,” Haver said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll live.”

“Which is more than I can say for Jason Whitley,” Haver added. “Can you show me where you found him, or would you rather wait here?”

There were too many curious people gathering near the fence. “I’ll take you into the woods,” I told him.

This time, Ron Haver held my arm. The police photographer, a skinny young woman, followed behind us with two cameras hanging from straps around her neck. The equipment looked heavy. I half expected her to topple over. Officer O’Reilly walked beside her, chatting.

“Oh, boy,” Haver said when we rounded the bend. “Stay right here, Colleen. Don’t come any closer.”

“Like you have to tell me twice?” I told him.

Haver left my side and
pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. He approached Jason Whitley with soft, calculated steps, as if afraid he might wake him. He squatted beside the dead teacher and studied his head, his clothes, and the position of the body.

“You didn’t happen to move him, did you?”

“The next time I trip over a corpse, I’ll try to be more careful,” I said.

Ron Haver looked dumbfounded. “You tripped over him?”

“I don’t look down when I run. I didn’t even see him until after I fell. We sort of got tangled up somehow.”

“Great,” Haver muttered.

Young Officer O’Reilly laughed. I failed to see the humor.

“And I’m guessing this,” the detective said with a sweep of his arm, “is from you crawling all over the scene?”

I nodded. The damp, sandy soil showed a jumble of footprints and knee indentations where I pulled myself to my feet. How else was I supposed to get up after tripping over a dead guy?

“Karen, the usual angles. And let’s not forget these footprints,” Haver instructed the police photographer, but I knew that was more for my benefit than hers.

“I really am sorry,” I said, needing to say something. “I know I messed up the crime scene.”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens.”

“I’ll bet all the time,” I said.

Haver got to his feet. “No. Actually, only once in a great while.”

What a morning! Not only had I tripped over a corpse and disrupted a crime scene, I never even got in my run. I felt chilly and stupid, and I wanted to go home. I shivered and hugged myself for warmth.

Haver took hold of my arm and led me away from the body. “Let’s get you out of here. I’ll walk you back to the parking lot.”

By the time we emerged from the woods, a county hearse had pulled into the lot. Two burly attendants unloaded a stretcher from the back and set it on the blacktop.

Out on Poe Street, the gawkers gathered beyond the chain-link fence. A news van attempted to enter but was ordered to turn back by a Tranquil Harbor cop.

“I should call the paper to see who’s around to cover this,” I told Ron.

“The paper?”

“The
Town Crier
. I freelance for them. They should get a photographer down here.”

Haver reached inside his jacket and pulled out a battered notebook and a gel pen. “I didn’t know you were writing for the
Crier
. How long?”

“A couple of months. Someone should be here. After all, it’s local news.”

“I think your reporters are already here.”

I scanned the crowd. Willy Rojas, one of six staff photographers with the paper, stood apart from the onlookers with his camera poised, ready to snap away when the attendants brought out the body. By Willy’s side, I recognized Margaret Allen, the beat reporter, by her soft brown curls.

“Did you know your editor is an old friend of mine?” Haver said.

“Meredith Mancini is an old friend of yours?” Meredith, my twenty-five-year-old editor, looked about twelve—far too young to be anyone’s old friend.

“No. Ken Rhodes. The executive editor.”

Ken Rhodes had started working at the
Crier
only three weeks ago. Meredith had introduced him when I dropped off an article at the newspaper last week. Though I barely knew Rhodes, what I had seen of him looked impressive enough. Any female with even halfway decent eyesight would call him a stud.

I spotted nosy Mrs. Testino in the crowd beyond the parking lot, hard to miss in her exclusive Omar-the-Tentmaker housedress and blue-rinsed hair. My Bobby stood in front of her in a wash-worn Devils sweatshirt, his fingers laced in the chain-link fence and his ten-year-old face filled with awe and wonder. Sara watched from nearby, a pretty blonde in a lightweight spring jacket, wearing the cool-bored expression of a sixteen-year-old woman of the world. Their buses would have come and gone. I’d have to give them both a lift to school if I didn’t want them hanging around the house all day pestering me.

“Can I leave?” I asked Ron Haver, anxious to put the events of the morning behind me.

“Just a couple of questions.” His face went serious and the niceties were set aside. We’d entered the realm of official police business. “You’re still living up on Steinbeck, right? What’s the house number?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Did you happen to notice what time you started out on your run this morning?”

“About six thirty, I guess. Maybe a few minutes earlier. We didn’t even have breakfast yet.”

“And you headed straight for the woods?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not a thing. Except for Mr. Whitley, of course.”

“Of course.” Haver allowed a small smile without looking up from his notebook. I took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. This wasn’t, as they would say in the movies, the third degree.

“Everything looked the same except for the underbrush,” I volunteered.

“The underbrush? It looked disturbed?”

“No. It looked new.”

“It wouldn’t have sprung up overnight.”

“No. Since last October,” I told him.

“What are you talking about?” Haver asked, confused. He looked up from his notebook.

“I haven’t used the path since last October. Things changed—a sapling here, some weeds there. About a billion old pine needles …”

“You mean you picked today to start jogging again?”

I nodded.

“Terrific.”

“Listen, Ron. It’s nice to see you again.” I realized how ridiculous that sounded. We were reacquainted because I tripped over a corpse and thoroughly disturbed a crime scene. “What I mean is, I want to drive my kids to school, then go home and have a quiet nervous breakdown. Are we through here?”

Haver squinted at the bright sun filtering through the trees from the direction of the bay. “Looks like it’s shaping up to be a great day. You should try to get out. Take your mind off this.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll go jogging,” I said.

Another grin. “Seriously. You’re a wreck, Colleen. You’re shaking.”

I anticipated seeing Mr. Whitley’s body each time I closed my eyes. I needed to cry, but not in the middle of the Little League parking lot in front of police, reporters, and scores of onlookers.

“I just want to go home!”

“Okay. Sure. You want a squad car to take you? The whole block is filled with reporters,” Haver said, pointing to yet another news van that pulled over on Poe Street.

“No. I see my kids over by the fence. I just want to drive them to school and get back home as fast as I can.”

“That’s fine. I can always drop by your house later if I need anything else.”

I inched away from the concession stand. “Like what?”

“More detailed information.”

“Fine,” I said, and walked off toward the fence and my kids—whose grilling, I knew, would be far more in-depth than Ron Haver’s had been.

3

“What a nightmare!” I told Bevin Thompson, my across-the-street neighbor.

“And this was always such a nice neighborhood,” she said absently. Her eyes looked a little vacant. Of course, she was right. Nothing much ever happened in our tiny, upper-middle-class enclave. A dead body was completely out of the ordinary, a really big deal.

“A reporter chased me halfway up the block,” I complained as I paced back and forth in my kitchen, waiting for the coffee machine to finish dripping. “The kids badgered me on the ride to school. Would you believe Old Lady Testino called to ask if Whitley’s head was attached to his body?”

Bevin winced, though anything coming from Mrs. Testino’s mouth was bound to be shocking.

I continued to pace. It seemed to be the only way to keep from shaking. Too many thoughts were going through my head. “Dear Lord, my nerves are shot. I wish Neil was here. I called and left a message for him. He never called back.”

“There’s a shock,” Bev mumbled.

When Bevin bought the house across the street seven years ago, we became instant friends, despite being polar opposites. She was one of those tall, willowy types, with flaming red hair and goddess-like good looks. A talented landscape artist, Bevin had had showings all over the state and twice at one of those small, pretentious galleries in Manhattan. My short stature had never been thin enough to be considered petite, and my freaky hair tended to retract into tight little ringlets at the mere forecast of rain. My writing skills were solid but not dazzling, and a reader had once referred to one of my stories as hack journalism.

As for our husbands, opposites failed to attract. Neither man liked the other. I never really cared for pompous Franklin Thompson, and Bevin outright hated Neil from the start.

“If I don’t get that cup of coffee soon, I’m going to chew raw grounds,” I said.

“Would you please sit down! You’re wearing out the floor tiles.” Bevin reached in the cupboard for coffee mugs. “Where’s your mother this morning?”

“She went to Dizzie’s Salon for hair repair. She’ll be back soon.”

“Good. Maybe the smell will be gone by then.”

I sniffed the air. Sure, I needed a shower. I had a tough morning. A jog can take a lot out of a girl. So can an encounter with a corpse.

“Did my deodorant fail or something?” I asked.

“There’s a distinct smoke smell.”

“I don’t smell a thing.”

“It’s all over your clothes, Colleen. Do you think half the neighborhood doesn’t know you sneak-smoke out back near the fence where your mother can’t see you?”

My parents lived in the house directly behind mine. The arrangement had been a mixed blessing. It was convenient for the kids to come and go, though privacy for both households was nonexistent—not that my parents have ever been big on privacy.

Their property was high in the back and sloped downward toward the street, as did all the lots on Hemingway Place. My parents could not see up into my yard because of the stockade fence. Still, I always used caution when my nerves were shot and I’d give in to temptation and sneak a cigarette. The gate we’d installed for a shortcut between the two yards could swing wide open without warning, so I lived in fear of being caught mid-puff by a crazed, sixty-three-year-old chronic bronchitis sufferer.

I opened the cabinet under the sink. “I’ll get the air freshener.”

“Take a shower and change your clothes.”

“I can’t keep still long enough to shower,” I told her.

“You need a drink,” Bevin said.

“I need several, but I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry! You’re always hungry.”

“I’ll ignore the snide remark. I don’t want to eat because I’m nauseated enough already.”

Bevin poured two cups of coffee and reached in the cabinet over the refrigerator for the brandy. “This will help.”

I covered my cup with my hand. “I keep that for my cramps. Besides, it’s not even noon yet.”

“Oh, please! It’s noon somewhere.” She pushed my hand away and poured a generous splash in my cup.

The booze helped. Fortified, I ran upstairs, stripped off my clothes, showered, and dressed in fresh jogging sweats. By the time I got back to the kitchen, my mother was at the table sipping tea.

My mother’s hair, at least for the time being, was a light shade of ash brown with just a hint of gold. Formerly, it had looked sort of pink, the result of an off-brand hair coloring. She had been dying her own hair for years and changed the color so often my father nicknamed her Rainbow Head. The ash brown, hairdresser fix-it job suited her. So did the newly cropped hairdo.

“Colleen, you poor thing!” my mother said. She patted the seat on the chair beside her. “Come sit down.” I thought she wanted to comfort me. I should have known better. “It serves you right for running alone so early in the morning. How many times have I told you those woods aren’t safe?”

“Please! Mom!” I rubbed my temples and regretted for the hundredth time not moving to Alaska when I first got married.

Bevin poured me a fresh cup of coffee and omitted the brandy. I sipped at it and eyed the blue-and-white Entenmann’s box my mother had brought over. My stomach growled, but I still felt queasy—even a small slice of cake was out of the question.

“You know, Colleen, I half expected Neil to be here when I came over. You did call him, didn’t you?”

“I left a message. I was hoping the kids could stay at his place tonight.”

“Too busy in his brand-new life to return your phone calls, huh?” my mother said. “Well, that’s Neil. A true Sicilian, through and through.”

“He’s only half Sicilian, Ma,” I said, as if she didn’t know.

“Right. The bad half.”

My mother, Stella Trani Fleming, was born in Naples, and Neapolitans viewed men with even a drop of Sicilian blood suspiciously. My dad, Patrick Fleming, came from solid, down-to-earth Irish stock—as far from Sicilian as you could get.

I glanced at Bevin, hoping for a little sympathy. She lowered her head and lifted her coffee mug to her lips. Given the way she felt about Neil, I expected no compassion.