Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2)

by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  “Probable impact,” he said, offering infuriatingly little information.

  “She got pushed from a plane, hit the ground, and what, died from internal injuries?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Was anything missing of hers? You know, like jewelry or her purse or money—something?”

  “We found her purse. Apparently, that went out with her. Her wallet and cell phone were found inside. Near as we could tell, the only thing missing is one of her sandals,” he said.

  “That’s probably out in the field somewhere,” I told him, “unless there was a good wind when someone tossed her out of the plane. If one of those freak gusts blowing in from the ocean took it, that sandal could have landed in Cleveland.”

  We paused for a moment when our drinks arrived. Ron, surprisingly, had ordered a beer. That would have been Kate’s influence. He was typically a far more conservative type. I half-expected a diet soda, maybe even milk. I had ordered my usual.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a gin and tonic in your hand except at a Little League game. Aren’t you concerned that you might have a bit of a drinking problem?” he asked.

  “First, I don’t drink every day—though most days it seems like a pretty good idea to me. Second, both the gin and the tonic are good for my health.”

  “How do you figure that?” he asked.

  “Well, the gin is antiseptic, so it’s good for infections. And tonic water contains quinine. If I ever catch malaria, I’m way ahead of the game.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ron took a long gulp of his beer. “And you’re driving home?”

  “I’m eating. I’m fine with one. That’s why I only have one when I’m out.”

  “How about when you’re at home?” he asked.

  “Then two is my limit. Any more than that makes me fall asleep.”

  The waiter brought our lunches. Ron Haver’s medium bacon cheeseburger looked drippy and scrumptious. I had the chicken Caesar salad, the gold standard of the dieting crowd.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said as I played with the romaine. “Where is Dizzie’s Tiffany bracelet?”

  “I guess it’s in her jewelry case along with the rest of her trinkets.”

  “Did you look for it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I can’t get a search warrant just to look through Dizzie’s jewelry box, Colleen. Even you should know that.”

  “So you don’t know if it’s missing or not?”

  Ron put down his burger. I had the distinct impression I was ruining his appetite. “We returned all of Dizzie’s jewelry to her husband.”

  “Does that mean she was wearing jewelry when Kate and I found her dead?” I asked. “Neither of us could remember.”

  “There were bracelets, her wedding band, of course, and earrings,” Ron told me.

  “How about that special bracelet?”

  “I don’t know. Bracelets are bracelets. She had on a bunch, and we gave them to Matthew. At this point, it doesn’t matter.”

  “But this was a very special bracelet. I never saw her without it since the day she bought it. She loved that thing to death.” I thought about what I had just said. “To death, Ron! Maybe I should ask the Hot Air King what happened to it.”

  “Oh, no you don’t! Don’t you dare screw up my investigation. Don’t make me speak to your boss.”

  “Call him if you want.” Ken Rhodes was a newspaper man. He would say some soothing words to Ron Haver and then call me to make sure I had indeed called the Hot Air King about the missing piece.

  “Maybe I’ll just tell your mother,” he threatened.

  He had me there. I could handle Ken Rhodes. My mother was an entirely different story.

  * * *

  I drove straight to the Town Crier office after lunch. I found Ken Rhodes at his desk, on the phone, as usual. I had a pretty good idea who was on the other end.

  Ken motioned for me to take a seat. I sat patiently, waiting for the conversation to end.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said before hanging up.

  “Let me guess,” I said before giving him a chance to speak. “That was Ron Haver. It’s amazing that a grown man, a county homicide investigator no less, could be such a crybaby tattletale. I feel like I’m in kindergarten.”

  Ken sighed. “Can’t you find another source? I mean, there must be someone else up there at the county level you can talk to about these things. Why do you have to go to Ron Haver?”

  “Duh,” I said. “Because he’s dating my sister. He’s the lead investigator. I don’t know anyone else who could supply the kind of information I need for my columns. Am I in trouble?”

  Ken laughed and got up from his chair. His long, muscular body was such a wonderful diversion. I could stare at it for hours and hours. I ran my fingers through my extra straight ponytail, pretending I wasn’t the least bit interested in the view. I saw no sense in giving him a big head. Ken’s ego was big enough already.

  “You’re not in trouble. Hounding people for information is your job. I just can’t stand listening to him complain.”

  “Good. I intend to write up a few things I found out about Leona Barber. I was also thinking about asking Matthew Oliver about Dizzie’s Tiffany bracelet.”

  “Do I have to worry that someone will find you drowned in a sink, too? I know subtlety isn’t exactly your forte.”

  “I’ll figure out a way to talk to him without being tacky about it. Don’t worry about it. I can be subtle,” I assured him.

  “Right,” he said. “Subtle like a jackhammer.”

  13

  I had never met Leona Barber, but her unexpected appearance in the field adjacent to Tranquil Harbor Airport made her a very hot topic for my column—particularly in light of Dizzie Oliver’s death. Though Leona’s body had been the second to be discovered in a week in our small town, technically, she had been the first to die.

  I wasn’t much of a believer in happenstance, yet something didn’t add up. I knew I would have to go out to that field and take a look around. The police had already scoured the area the day they brought out the woman’s corpse. They found her handbag and nothing more. I didn’t know what, if anything, I hoped to find, but I thought I could at least locate Leona’s missing shoe. I did know I wasn’t about to go out there alone. I picked up the phone and dialed Bevin Thompson.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

  “I’m up for a girls’ night out, if that’s what you have in mind,” she said.

  “Sure. A girls’ night out. Wear something comfortable, really casual, and waterproof. Be ready by eight thirty.”

  “That’s kind of late, isn’t it? What do I do with Dennis?”

  Bevin’s son, Dennis, was my Bobby’s best friend. They liked nothing more than being together.

  “My parents will watch the kids. They’ll have a great time.”

  “But it’s a school night!”

  “We’ll be home by ten,” I told her.

  “Why do I have to wear something waterproof?” she asked.

  “We’re spending some time outdoors.” I hung up before she could ask any more questions.

  * * *

  “Why are we here?” Bevin asked when we turned onto the access road leading to Tranquil Harbor Airport. “It’s completely deserted. They’re closed, Colleen—and it’s raining! Please don’t tell me we’re going out into that field where the cops found Leona Barber’s body. Please!”

  “When did you become such a sissy-Mary? You’re wearing a raincoat. You’ve got your boots on. What’s the problem?” I parked the car in the lot and reached behind me to grab the flashlight I had tossed into the backseat before leaving the house. I flicked it on to double-check it. The batteries I’d found in the junk drawer in the kitchen still seemed to have plenty of juice left in them.

  “This is insane. What do you hope to find out here? Didn’t the police already comb this place?”

  “They on
ly searched the field,” I told her. “I’m looking for a stray sandal.”

  “I have a whole shoe rack filled with sandals at home. You can come over and take your pick.”

  “Come on, Bev. When they found Leona’s body, she was missing one of her sandals. I really need to find that shoe. What if it didn’t come off when Leona took flight, so to speak? What if it’s somewhere around the terminal or in the parking lot?”

  “What would it prove if we found it?” Bevin asked.

  I really didn’t know what it would prove. It could have meant there had been a struggle getting her into a plane. Depending on where we found the sandal, it might indicate which plane Leona was forced into as an unwilling passenger, as well as whether she was already dead, or worse still, alive when she took her fatal plunge. Of course, it was possible the sandal meant nothing at all. Perhaps Leona had been a risk taker who took to wearing only one sandal to make a bold fashion statement, for all I knew. But the shoe needed to be found, and I was determined to do just that.

  We threw open the doors and stepped out of the car. The gravel crunched beneath our feet and the parking lot was nearly pitch black. Bevin put up the hood on her rain slicker. I hadn’t thought about headgear. I flicked on the flashlight and went around to the back of the car to open the trunk.

  “Are you nuts?” Bevin asked, alarmed when she saw what I had retrieved.

  I opened a black umbrella and held it over my head. “What?”

  “It’s pouring out, dummy, and I heard thunder. What if it starts to lightning? How bright are you, standing outside with that thing sticking up? Why don’t you just screw a big lightning rod into your head?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I closed the umbrella and tossed it back inside the trunk.

  “Where to?” Bevin asked.

  “Let’s go around back,” I told her, starting for the side of the terminal. “Keep your eyes open.”

  “What color is this infamous missing shoe?” Bevin asked. “Neon orange or bright yellow, I hope.”

  “We’re looking for a sandal, and it’s brown,” I said, remembering the shoe’s match from the evidence bag. “It has a heel, probably two inches.”

  “Great! Just great! Everything out here looks brown or beige.”

  It was true. The field had taken on a dead-grass beige color, and around the terminal, there was so little light that even the colorful flowers I thought looked so pretty on the day I first saw the airport appeared a dark, ugly brown.

  Behind the building, where the hangar was located and a few planes stood, looked even more bleak than the front entrance. The rain soaked my head and clothes. I wondered what compelled me to come out on such a miserable night. I had honestly thought there would be less chance that Bevin and I would be spotted snooping around with the weather so bad. After all, who in their right minds would be out in a rainstorm—except for us?

  “Hey! Point that beam over near those planes,” Bevin said.

  I kept the beam pointed down and swung the flashlight back and forth, sweeping the ground. The planes parked around back were all small—similar to the two-seaters Drake Tuttle spoke of when I first went to the airport for the story on flying lessons. For some strange reason, I couldn’t imagine why the tiny planes would be outdoors in a rain storm. There was a hangar after all, and I thought the safest place for these small, grounded coffins would have been indoors.

  We walked toward the place where the blacktop ended and the grass began. I couldn’t see much, but Bevin’s eyes were sharper.

  “Is that something over there?” she asked, pointing toward something sticking up in the grass.

  I aimed the flashlight in that general direction and walked toward it. It was a piece of paper, rain-soaked, yet fluttering in the wind that had picked up since we first arrived.

  “It’s only garbage,” I told her. With the wind blowing, I knew there was bound to be plenty of that. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. That shoe could be stuck up in a tree for all anybody knows.” I was surprised Bevin didn’t feel the same.

  “As long as we’re already out here and soaking wet to boot, we might as well give it our best shot.”

  We continued to walk. The temperature wasn’t particularly chilly, but my saturated clothes made me feel cold and miserable. I kept walking, this time toward the runway, methodically sweeping the beam from the flashlight back and forth.

  I thought I spotted something off to the left and backtracked a few steps. “Hey, Bev, there’s something over there in the grass.”

  Bevin took a step back and we both walked over to the barely visible object. As we approached, we could see it was distinctly some kind of footwear.

  “It’s a sandal!” Bevin shouted so I would hear her in the pouring rain. “A brown sandal! How cool is this? We found it!”

  “Yeah. That’s definitely the match to the shoe I saw when they brought out her body,” I yelled back. “Now what do we do with it?”

  We thought we were completely alone until we saw the beam of a second flashlight coming toward us. I switched mine off, and Bevin and I both ran in the direction of the hangar. I was sure my heart would explode from my chest like something out of Alien. What if the killer had come back for the very same sandal Bevin and I had found? My kids would be motherless and so would poor little Dennis, Bevin’s son.

  We reached the side of the building and plastered ourselves against the wall, trying to blend in with the dark and make ourselves invisible. I hated the thought of evidence getting away from us, and whoever was out there had ventured out into the wet, dreary night looking for that sandal, just as we had.

  “Bev,” I whispered. “I think we’re in trouble. We can’t get to the shoe, and whoever that is with the flashlight will take it and go.”

  “They must know we’re here,” Bevin said. “Your car’s parked right out front. They might not be looking for the sandal at all. Maybe they’re looking for us.”

  We ended the discussion. We both knew what had to be done. Still hugging the wall, we inched our way toward the front of terminal and the parking lot. Once inside my car, I would be able to use the flashlight to catch a license plate, provided whoever was out near the hangar had driven out to the airport. Halfway around the building, we saw the reflection of flashing red and blue lights. We got to within three feet of the front of the building when the beam from a flashlight far more powerful than mine blinded us.

  “Come on out, Mrs. Caruso,” a rather youthful, familiar voice called out.

  Both Bevin and I walked forward. I offered the man my most innocent smile. “Good evening, Officer O’Reilly. What brings you out on such a terrible night?”

  “I guess you do,” he said. I noticed he wasn’t smiling back, but he did look somewhat amused, as far as I could tell in the pouring rain. “I saw your flashlight bobbing from up the road and came down here to check it out. I called in about it. I’ll have to radio back to the station to tell them it’s a false alarm. I need to ask you some questions. Go sit in your mother’s car and wait for me.”

  “It’s my car now,” I informed him, walking toward the Sentra.

  We waited until Officer O’Reilly came over and climbed into the back seat. He had on a police slicker, which deposited rain water all over the upholstery. Bevin and I did our own water damage up front. We were soaked and shivering.

  “Did you find anything out there?” young James O’Reilly asked.

  Bevin, normally the stealthier of the two of us, cracked first. “We found Leona Barber’s missing sandal!”

  I scowled at her.

  “Are you guys sure it was Leona’s? We combed through most of that field the day we found her body. I don’t see how we could have missed it,” O’Reilly said over my shoulder.

  “It wasn’t in the field. We found it just beyond that paved area, in the grass near the hangar,” Bevin explained.

  “God! If we’re ever captured by enemy troops, you’ll sing like a canary!” I complained.r />
  Bevin laughed and gave my shoulder a playful shove. “Come on! We’ve been caught red-handed. Lighten up, Colleen. You wouldn’t have been able to keep the sandal anyway. It’s evidence!”

  O’Reilly agreed. “She’s right, Mrs. Caruso. It is evidence. I’ll photograph the area and bag it to take with me. You ladies should go home now. You shouldn’t have been out here in the first place.”

  “We’re not under arrest?” I asked. I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed his smirk. I wondered briefly if it was the same facial expression he gave to all the premenopausal moms in town who misbehaved.

  “Nah. You weren’t even trespassing. There’s no sign out on the road warning people to keep out. Just don’t let me catch you out here after dark again.”

  He exited the backseat and went straight to his cruiser, presumably to find an evidence bag. I started the Sentra’s engine and turned on the heat to full blast to warm us up.

  “What now?” Bevin asked.

  “Now we wait until Officer O’Reilly comes back with the sandal, and then we go home,” I said.

  “Why? Do you think he had something to do with Leona’s death?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to leave that kid out here all alone in the dark.”

  “He’s not a kid, he’s a cop. He has a gun. He’ll be fine. This is his job.”

  I didn’t really care. He was only in his twenties, and I wasn’t leaving until he was safely on his way back to the station. I had grown very fond of the young policeman who, instead of being angry whenever he caught me in an unusual predicament, seemed entertained by my actions. It was hard not to feel a little overprotective.

  We waited until we saw the bobbing flashlight come around the side of the terminal. He waved to us when he opened the driver’s side door of his black-and-white, as if he knew I was watching out for him.

  “Are you happy now? Can we please go home?” Bevin asked.

  I put the Nissan in gear and drove down the road to the highway. By the time we got to my mother’s house to check on the kids and beg for a cup of hot coffee, we were both drying out nicely.

  “This will wake you two up,” my mother said, handing us steaming mugs of sludge. Poor coffee-making skills ran in my family, which explained my preference for diet soda or better yet, a gin and tonic. “Why are you two so wet? What were you up to? No good, I’m sure.”