Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa - Jersey Girl 01 - New Math Is Murder (6 page)

“Why would the police be watching you?”

“Because I found the body,” I told her. “What if I’m a suspect?”

Bevin tossed her glorious red locks back from her shoulders. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The car’s always there, Bev. I’ll bet they take notes—when I come home, when I leave.”

“You’re absolutely delirious!”

“I sort of had a motive.”

“What motive? You barely knew the victim.”

“Remember I had that argument with him at the parent-teacher conference?”

“Big deal!” Bevin said. “I’ll bet half the parents in Tranquil Harbor had words with Jason Whitley at one time or another. If the police really suspected …
hey, that’s Bobby
! Your kid’s up at bat.”

I forgot all about stakeouts and Jason Whitley. My son, the strike-out king, stood alone in the batter’s box. I cupped my hands over my mouth and screamed, “Keep your eye on the ball, Bobby!”

Either Bobby didn’t hear me or he pretended not to. He’d been disappointed Neil hadn’t shown up for the game, but I couldn’t help feeling relieved. Our separation was too new, and my wounds were still far too fresh. I didn’t know how I would react to seeing Neil. Part of me was afraid I might still love him, despite my broken heart. The other part of me, the vengeful side, wasn’t sure I ever wanted to see him again.

Bobby took two big swings and missed both times. I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary. By the time I got to the
amen
part, a deflated chorus of
ooh
! filled the air. Bobby struck out for his third consecutive at-bat.

So much for divine intervention.

“At least he didn’t end the game,” Bev said. “There’s still one more batter to go. Can you guess who gets that honor?”

Dennis, Bevin’s son, stepped up to the plate.

“I can’t stand to watch this, Bev. I’ll meet you over by the fence, and we’ll all go home together.”

I left the bleachers and walked over to the field house. There weren’t many names on the sign-up sheet. I flipped the pages and signed up for grill duty on Friday—the same night as Jennifer Whitley. There would only be the two of us working the stand. Alone with Jennifer, I felt confident I could use my investigative prowess to either convince Ken Rhodes of her guilt or exonerate her completely.

* * *

All three fields were in use Friday night. The spectators arrived hungry and stayed ravenous through each game. I worked the grill and fryer while Jennifer Whitley took orders and did everything else. By eight thirty, my skull was pounding and my feet throbbed. I blotted my forehead with a paper towel.

“Four more cheeseburgers!” Jennifer called out from the counter.

I dug beef patties out of the freezer and tossed them on the grill, then rolled hot dogs around with the spatula so they wouldn’t burn. The buzzer for the deep fryer went off, and I lifted out the wire basket to drain the sludge-brown, much-used-and-re-used oil from the fries
.

“I need two cheese steaks, double on that cheese,” Jennifer said.

The strong scents of sauerkraut and grill fumes were making my head spin. I’d skipped dinner and was glad I had. If nothing else, my upside-down life was doing wonders for my figure.

Jennifer came up behind me and grabbed a couple of hot dog buns. “Are they ready yet?”

I used tongs to snatch the wieners off the grill and flip the burgers. The steak wafers looked a little crunchy. I covered the burnt edges with lots of cheese and hoped no one would notice.

Jennifer returned for the burgers and cheese steaks. “These are the last of the orders. I’ve been telling everyone we shut down the grill for the night.”

“Bless you,” I said and went to the counter to help peddle candy.

“We have to clean the grill before we leave,” Jennifer reminded me.

I doused the grill with water. While the gunk sizzled, I grabbed paper towels and went to work on the oil splatters near the deep fryer. Jennifer closed up the counter and tallied the money in the register. When she finished, she came back to help clean up the kitchen.

“I covered your husband’s memorial service at the high school,” I said, completely out of the blue.

“Covered the service?” She eyed me suspiciously. “For that column in the
Town Crier
?”

I nodded. “How are you holding up, Jennifer?”

“I’m doing okay.” She seemed mildly uncomfortable with the subject. “I take it one day at a time. What about you? It’s been less than two months since your husband walked out on you. How are you doing?”

The semi-grieving widow sure knew where to jab a red-hot poker.

“You’ve heard,” I said.

Jennifer pulled a plastic trash bag from a drawer and emptied the wastepaper basket. “Bad new travels fast in Tranquil Harbor.”

“Everyone knows everything about everyone else in a small community,” I agreed.

She spun the garbage bag and worked a twist tie around the top. “I guess you’re referring to Jason and that colossal whore of a guidance counselor?”

It dawned on me that except for the dead husband thing, she and I were more or less in the same boat. “That
and
Neil boinking his partner.”

Jennifer tossed the bulging bag near the back door. “Do you realize if Neil turned up dead anytime soon, you’d be the prime suspect?”

“With good reason. I fantasize about him meeting a horrible death,” I admitted.

I took a scouring pad from the rim of the sink and attacked the grunge around the deep fryer with enthusiasm. Jennifer used the spatula to scrape watery sludge from the grill.

“In case you’re wondering, I didn’t kill my husband,” she said.

“I never thought you did,” I told her truthfully.

“But some people do.”

“And some people don’t.”

“Does anyone on the faculty think I did it?” she asked me.

“I haven’t spoken to them yet.”

“Do you intend to?”

“I’m not an investigative reporter,” I assured her. “I’m only writing about the murder.”

“Just between us,” Jennifer confided, “I think you should know that Jason and I were married for nine years. My husband slept around for most of those years. He’d have a fling, break it off, and have another. It isn’t like I suddenly couldn’t stand his cheating one second longer. Betty Vernon wasn’t Jason’s first affair—and she wasn’t his last, either.”

The comment caught me by surprise. “Who
was
his last?” I asked.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“But you have your suspicions?”

“More like a nagging feeling,” she said. “Didn’t you have nagging feelings just before Neil walked out on you?”

“Not even a hint,” I told her. “He worked long hours. At times he acted a little distant. I thought we were in a rut or something. It never occurred to me he was cheating. Of course, I’ve been told I’m dense.”

“I hope you have a good lawyer.”

“Lucinda Maynard. I heard she’s terrific.”

“If she’s your lawyer, you can’t be
that
dense,” Jennifer said.

“Why did you put up with Jason for so long?”

She gave it some thought before answering. “I guess for Jay-Jay. Maybe for security. Who knows? You get used to being married. I didn’t want to be alone.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

The hours spent with Jennifer Whitley hadn’t given me anything to write about. The quiet, gentle baseball mom wouldn’t be canonized for sainthood anytime soon, yet I doubted she was capable of murdering anyone.

I called Rhodes’s cell phone the minute Jennifer left for home to discuss my impression of the widow, but could barely hear him with the static.

“What’s wrong with your phone?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t know. It worked okay before,” I told him. “Maybe it’s your phone.”

“What?”

“I said … oh, forget it!” I yelled.

“Come on over,” he said.

He gave me his home address:
117 Bay Boulevard, Apartment 8C. I knew the building. It was the tallest, most expensive condo tower on the waterfront—where Theda Oates lived and where my soon-to-be ex, Neil Caruso, currently resided.

I drove straight from the field to the waterfront, too tired to stop at home to change first. Grease splattered my T-shirt, and my jeans were streaked with sauerkraut juice. I refused to check my appearance in the rearview mirror. What difference would it make if my hair got curly? I would still look awful even if, by some miracle, my hair went arrow straight.

My ailing Ford Escort looked like a poor relation to the Jaguars, Lincolns, and Mercedes-Benz two-seaters in the dark, eerie parking lot on Bay Boulevard. There were fifteen floors and over a hundred units in the building, including four sprawling penthouses. A wise profiteer on Tranquil Harbor’s zoning board had either managed to overlook the height ordinance placed on waterfront structures, or the developer had received a miraculous variance without the customary public hearing.

Inside the building, the graceful lobby with its gleaming Italian marble floor made me feel like a scullery maid. Two women stepped off the elevator while I spoke to the doorman. They looked like models from the Neiman Marcus insert in the Sunday paper.

“Mr. Rhodes says to go on up,” the doorman told me after phoning him. “Use the center elevator, Miss. It’s faster.”

Apartment 8C was a corner unit at the very end of a carpeted hallway. I rang the buzzer and nearly collapsed when Rhodes, shirtless, opened the door.

“Um … ah, um …” I sputtered.

“That’s what I like about you, Colleen. You’re never at a loss for words.”

“You shouldn’t have dressed up on my account,” I said, stepping inside.

“You shouldn’t have either.”

I looked down at my clothes and regretted not stopping at home to change. “I was working a deep fryer all night. What’s your excuse?”

“I was on the treadmill. I can throw on a shirt if you’re uncomfortable.”

“I’m not fazed by bare-chested men,” I told him.

My father had gone shirtless every summer. Growing up, Dick had roamed the house in nothing but his drawers. Even Neil, who could be caught in his boxers going to and from the bathroom, the kitchen, and wherever else he tended to wander in the morning, had never made me blush. Their chests were just chests. Ken’s upper torso was like a work of art. I kept hoping he would chuck the towel draped around his neck so I could get a better view, but it wasn’t to be. The towel stayed put. I went to the living room and sat down on the edge of the long leather sofa.

Rhodes eased himself into a matching recliner. “Let’s get down to business. What did Jennifer Whitley have to say?”

“Jason Whitley had been carrying on with other women for years,” I began. “Jennifer knew about the affairs from the start. Whitley’s last, or next to last, was Betty Vernon, the guidance counselor up at the high school.
There was someone after the guidance counselor, but Jennifer isn’t sure who it was. I think Jennifer stopped loving her husband a long time ago, but she didn’t sound like she hated him.”

“Did Whitley have any life insurance?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t think to ask. There’s no way I could have introduced a question like that into polite conversation anyway. She did seem impressed that Lucinda Maynard is my lawyer.”

“I’m impressed, too. I heard all about the Maynard woman when I first came to Tranquil Harbor. Nice move, Colleen.”

“A friend referred me,” I told him.

“Do you think you can pull another kitchen duty with Jennifer Whitley? Maybe find out if she ever consulted with a lawyer?”

“There isn’t much time to chat when we’re working.”

“Then we’ll leave Jennifer Whitley up in the air for now and move on. Maybe you should arrange an interview with that algebra teacher—the one running the basketball camp.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can ask questions like ‘what age groups can sign up for the camp,’ and ‘by the way, did you happen to kill Jason Whitley?’ ”

“You might want to be a little more subtle.”

Ken Rhodes appeared to think something over, and conversation ceased. I pulled my eyes from his pectoral region long enough to take in the décor. Beyond the terrace door was heavy, black wrought iron patio furniture. The living room furniture consisted of leather and wood pieces—all non-cluttered male stuff. The focal point of the room was a monstrous wall-mounted TV that looked almost as big as the screen at the Cineplex.

“There’s no way to build a story around the high school guidance office, so I guess talking to the Vernon woman is out,” he finally said.

“No, it’s not. My daughter’s marks are slipping. As it happens, Betty Vernon is Sara’s guidance counselor.”

“That’ll work.”

“I’m not sure what I should be asking her. Let’s face it, I always wrote the kind of light stories that people used to line the bottom of cat litter boxes.”

“Think of this as on-the-job training.”

“It’s beginning to feel more like baptism by fire,” I muttered.

“And it should. You’re getting good columns out of this.”

I never dreamed of becoming a fabulous investigative reporter, writing a bestseller, or having the honor of Poet Laureate bestowed upon me. My dreams were more ordinary—making a halfway decent living by writing, a little name recognition every now and then, maybe a one-on-one interview with Colin Farrell in a small Irish pub—everyday stuff.

I got up off the couch. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ve got to get going. My kids are beginning to think their mother walked out on them, too.”

“Just let me throw on a shirt, and I’ll walk you down to your car.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “Don’t bother.”

“I insist,” he said.

I wasn’t about to argue. I didn’t feel safe in the parking lot, even if it was in the ritziest neighborhood in town. Night in the bay area was always dark and deserted in the winter and early spring, before warm weather brought out kids and cars and beachgoers.

Rhodes slipped on a shirt, and we went to wait for the elevator. I checked out the rug pattern in the hallway to avoid conversation. After a few silent, awkward minutes, the bell dinged, and the door slid open. I was vaguely aware of a couple standing off to the right when we stepped inside.

It took a few seconds to register the familiar faces. When it hit me, I wanted to crawl into the corner and die.