Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa - Jersey Girl 01 - New Math Is Murder

by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  “Mr. Lynch, did someone use this phone in the past five minutes?” Rhodes asked him.

  “I don’t know. I was just passing by the office when I heard a phone ringing,” Johnny Lynch explained.

  Rhodes thanked the janitor and hung up.

  I was terrified that someone phoned my home after my visit to the high school, though I knew I was in no immediate danger. Ken Rhodes stood right beside me. A killer would have to be both crazy and stupid to try anything with Rhodes around. I took a deep breath. It didn’t help. I had an irresistible urge to shove food in my mouth, but I was too full from the calzone. I could have used a cigarette, but I was completely out.

  Rhodes filled one of the plastic cups with Johnnie Walker Red and gave it to me. I took a sip and felt the burning liquid go down my throat and settle somewhere in my chest.

  “Ugh! This is awful! How can you drink this stuff?” I put the cup on the table and pushed it far away from me. “I’ll never touch bourbon again.”

  “It’s scotch, and you’re taking another mouthful,” he said, reaching over and giving the cup back to me. “You’re making someone very nervous, Colleen. You were nearly run down in a parking lot, drowned in the bay, and crushed to death by a bookcase. Now you’re getting phone calls! I want you to stop with the interviews, the column—and everything else that even remotely has anything to do with Jason Whitley. And I’d feel a whole lot better if you and your kids stayed with your parents tonight. They still live in Tranquil Harbor, don’t they?”

  “One street over, in the house right behind mine,” I said. “The kids are already there.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now drink.”

  The next sip of scotch didn’t seem nearly as repulsive as the first. It relaxed me enough to let me think. Rhodes was right. I was making someone very nervous.

  That someone was me.

  17

  Kevin Sheffield, Betty Vernon, and Stanley Da Silva were all up at the high school on the night of the bookcase incident. I thought I could concentrate on just those three—unless the custodians had a grudge against me and my sister. Not that any of it mattered. I had been officially barred from snooping into Jason Whitley’s murder.

  Ron Haver and Ken Rhodes insisted I leave both the unlawful and the law-abiding residents of Tranquil Harbor alone for safety’s sake. Truth be told, Haver had shown far more concern about Kate’s welfare than mine. My sister played up her library injury and hobbled bravely for days on end like a martyr. Ron Haver fell for it. He doted on Kate and managed to be at her side every moment he wasn’t on duty. Although Ken Rhodes did seem uneasy about my well-being, he wasn’t a bit interested in my writing career. Left up to him, I would continue to be plain old Colleen Caruso—the fluff writer.

  I wasn’t a feminine, delicate woman like Kate. My mother often told me I was made of tougher stuff and built to run on a muddy track. I decided to keep a low profile and immerse myself in my remaining writing assignments, but I fully intended to go forward with subtle probes into Jason Whitley’s murder. I knew Ron Haver still held Bevin Thompson high on his list of most likely suspects. My best friend would be in the clear and I’d finally have a name for myself if I could learn the identity of Whitley’s killer.

  I covered the community fundraiser for Jeffrey Fitzpatrick, the ten-year-old who had been hit by a car on Bay Boulevard back in April. The boy was making progress, thanks to grueling rehab sessions at the Kessler Institute in West Orange. It was fitting that the fundraiser should be held in the closed-off parking lot of St. Michael’s By the Sea, close to the scene of the accident.

  With the Escort still dead by drowning, Bevin offered to drive me to the fundraiser. She hunched over the steering wheel and watched the auxiliary policeman direct traffic. Conversation was strained between us and had been ever since she admitted to the affair with Jason Whitley. We’d had only two brief phone conversations since the day she confessed to me, with uneasy silences once the usual how are you and how are things going were asked.

  “Is your parking sticker valid, Bev?” I asked. As Harbor residents, we were entitled to free parking in the municipal beach lots, but an outdated sticker meant a five-buck parking fee.

  “I renewed it in January.”

  Traffic crawled. There were hundreds of people crammed into the lot St. Michael’s used for the rides and midway games. Bevin fiddled with the radio while we waited for the auxiliary cop to wave us on.

  “It feels strange not talking,” I told her. “It’s like we’re not really friends anymore.”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course we’re friends.”

  “But our topics of conversation are pretty limited lately.”

  “There’s parking in the lot up ahead,” Bevin said, changing the subject.

  “Is Franklin still cheating on you?” I dared to ask.

  “Dear Lord, aren’t you a persistent little thing!”

  “Is he?”

  Bevin sighed with resignation. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Are you?”

  “Jason Whitley’s dead, Colleen. Do you think I ran right out and found a replacement?”

  “It depends on how mad you are at Franklin.”

  “I’m flying solo,” she told me. “And Franklin still doesn’t know anything about Jason Whitley. With a little luck, he won’t find out for a while. I’m trying to take this one day at a time. As soon as the police arrest someone for Jason’s murder, Lucinda Maynard will start the old divorce ball rolling again.”

  I wondered how far Bevin could stretch that luck if the cops decided to arrest her for Whitley’s murder. “You don’t want to try to work things out with Franklin?”

  She pulled her Mercedes into an empty space. “Did you want to work things out with Neil after you found out he cheated on you?”

  “Neil isn’t interested in a reconciliation,” I told her.

  “What if he was?”

  “I fantasize about it, I guess. But as my mother says, once a cheat, always a cheat. No, I don’t think I would take him back.”

  “Any sane woman wouldn’t. I’ve had it with husbands, Colleen. I’m getting a dog. At least they’re loyal.” It was only a small wisecrack, but at least things were lightening up.

  We parked the car and walked two blocks back to the carnival. Traffic was a nightmare. Pedestrians had to dodge between the steady stream of cars just to cross the street.

  “It’s a good thing the cops are directing traffic down here or we’d be joining the Fitzpatrick kid up in Kessler,” Bev said. “I wonder if the police have any leads about the car that hit him.”

  I didn’t know. I planned to make a follow-up call to the police station and ask the detective on the case if there was anything new that I could include in the article. From what I read in the papers following the accident, a witness said she saw a light-colored sedan with what looked like a resident sticker in the rear window speed off after it clipped Jeffrey Fitzpatrick. There were over thirty thousand residents in our forty-two-square-mile town. Judging from the traffic on Bay Boulevard, it looked like half the cars were light-colored sedans, and they all had Tranquil Harbor stickers in their rear windows.

  I wondered why were there so many neutral cars in the area? Maybe the light colors reminded their owners of snow, or the sandy beach on the bay, or even cocaine, for all I knew. The color preference could also be due to an utter lack of imagination on the part of Tranquil Harbor residents.

  We reached the carnival and melted into the crowd. I had to track down Willy, the staff photographer, and talk to Jeffrey Fitzpatrick’s parents. I dug deep into my pocket and withdrew a five-dollar bill—all the money I had left for the weekend. I handed it over to Bevin.

  “The Knights of Columbus are raffling off an SUV. Could you fill out a ticket for me?”

  Bev sighed and grabbed the money. “You know nobody ever wins these things.”

  “Somebody has to win. And I’m in desperate need of a car.”

  “Yeah, and you’d prob
ably be persuaded to donate it back to the church after Father Egan makes you feel guilty for winning,” she told me.

  We agreed to meet in an hour. I strolled off toward the church, where I had arranged to meet the Fitzpatricks for an interview. Willy had found them first and was taking shots of the couple on the church steps when I got there. St. Michael’s loomed over Claire and Brian Fitzpatrick like a huge, gray, gothic monster ready to swallow them whole.

  “My hair looks like steel wool,” Claire Fitzpatrick complained when I introduced myself.

  “Everybody’s hair goes Brillo in this humidity,” I told her. Mine did, of course. But Brian Fitzpatrick had that dark, thick, straight, Irish hair that I’d sell my mother for.

  “Do you guys mind moving halfway up the steps?” Willy asked the couple. “I’d like to get the church doors in the background. I swear, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, nobody cares about your hair. And I promise I won’t take close-ups.”

  The Fitzpatricks complied, and Willy continued the shoot. Claire and Brian huddled together on the stone steps. They looked tired and vulnerable in their cutoff jeans and matching fundraiser T-shirts. I thought my problems were so monumental—Neil, Sara, Bobby, a dead car, and a laughable income occupied my mind day and night. But, compared to Claire and Brian Fitzpatrick’s worries, my troubles were insignificant.

  I pulled a pen and pad from my pocketbook and wrote my impressions of them. Willy finished his shots and the couple joined me on the bottom step.

  “Ready for some questions?” I asked.

  They offered identical, reluctant smiles.

  “I promise, they’re easy. We can start with the funds. Approximately how much does Father Egan expect to raise at the carnival?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Claire said. “We’re hoping for enough to help with the out-of-pocket expenses and insurance deductibles. There’s a fifty/fifty, donations from the snack stands, the raffles …”

  “The SUV?” I asked.

  “… and the jacket. A Bon Jovi donation.”

  Sara would do a backflip for that jacket.

  “Don’t forget the autographed hockey stick,” Brian Fitzpatrick reminded his wife.

  “Oh, right! The Devils,” Claire said.

  Bobby would do two backflips for that.

  “Local businesses donated toys, food baskets, manicures—even a weekend getaway package at that spa place down in Matawan,” Brian added.

  I knew he meant The Grand Duchess and wondered if Patrice Milner would ever know the trouble she caused with her romantic getaway packages?

  “We’ve already received donations from the Tranquil Harbor police, the volunteer fire department, and the EMTs. Jeff’s school, Woodrow Wilson, held a bake sale and pulled in six hundred dollars for stale cakes,” Claire joked, but the gratitude was evident in her voice.

  “I’ll need a little background information,” I told her. “Can you tell me about the accident?”

  Claire grimaced. “Hit and run. Can you imagine anyone hitting a kid and driving off like nothing happened? We were told the brake lights flashed briefly before the driver sped off, like Jeff was just some old stray dog—except you’d stop for a dog, wouldn’t you? I know I would!”

  “It happens,” Brian said, resigned.

  I urged Claire to continue. “There was a witness …”

  “An elderly woman saw the whole thing, but it was dark outside, after eight, and her eyesight isn’t the best,” Brian said. “She thought the car was a light color, but she has no idea of the make and model. She said there might have been a Harbor parking sticker in the back window, but it could have been any kind of sticker.”

  “Adele Ray,” I recalled from the newspaper accounts. “Seventy-eight years old with cataracts and a heart condition.”

  Claire Fitzpatrick glanced at my notes. “Her last name is spelled R–A–Y–E. Like that old-time actress—Martha Raye.”

  I added an E.

  “The call came from the hospital. Jeff’s school nurse lives on Bay Boulevard, and she ran outside when she heard the sirens. She recognized Jeff right away, thank God. Kids don’t carry identification,” Brian told me.

  “Obviously the community rallied around you,” I said.

  “Right from the beginning,” Claire continued. “The neighbors babysit the other kids at home, cook, and even help out with the laundry. They drove us back and forth to the hospital every day. Now they chauffeur us to Kessler. Jeff’s leg took the brunt of the impact. He’s walking again. At least he’s walking.”

  * * *

  Willy’s outstanding picture of Claire and Brian Fitzpatrick ran in the Crier the following week. Meredith Mancini axed my proposed headline and came up with the banner: Fundraiser Eases Financial Burden—far too understated, in my opinion. Willy and I squeezed inside Meredith’s small cubicle. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done.

  “You really should have used my headline,” I told Meredith. “I think it would have added more depth to the piece.”

  “Fitzpatrick Family Fundraiser Financially Favorable? You’ve got to be kidding! Stick to the stories, Colleen. Let me take care of the headlines.”

  Artistically wounded by the comment, I pretended to be enthralled with a tiny piece of lint that clung to my sweatpants as Meredith slid a sheet of copy paper across her desk. “I have two more assignments for you, if you’re interested. Nothing major. Just family-fun-type things.”

  “Oh, joy!”

  “Not into fun, Colleen?” Willy asked. “Neil problems again?”

  “Again? It never ends. He has the gall to claim his business is going under because some developers pulled their account. I don’t have a car anymore, I don’t have a cell phone, and I have the worst paying job on the planet—forgive me, Meredith.”

  “Stringers don’t make much money,” my young editor agreed. “What you need is a full-time job—something with benefits, medical coverage, dental, and a good 401K plan.”

  “And that’s about as far as it goes here,” Willy complained. “A decent salary doesn’t go hand-in-hand with the benefits. My Jeep is seven years old, and on its last legs. I might as well be Neil’s ex.”

  Meredith’s words were more sensible. “If you two are looking to get rich, you’re in the wrong business.”

  Willy sighed and gently stroked the Nikon swinging from his neck. “We suffer for our art.”

  “But the salary isn’t impossible to live on,” Meredith pointed out. “Look at teachers. They manage to exist on fairly modest salaries.”

  Teachers. Like Jason Whitley. The question of who killed Jason Whitley always seemed to hang in the air, like a melody stuck in my head that I couldn’t remember the words to.

  Breaking the story on Whitley’s killer would not only guarantee more in-depth articles than the usual family-fun stories and restaurant write-ups assigned to me, it might just lead to the resurrection of my column and full-time employment. If nothing else, it would certainly increase my bank balance. I knew I would have to ignore Rhodes and Haver, and anyone else who advised me to stay far away from the Whitley murder. I decided to pursue the story with a vengeance.

  I looked over the partition to Rhodes’s office. “Where’s the big man today?”

  Meredith shrugged. “He’s been gone since noon.”

  “It must be nice to be the boss,” Willy said. “Long, leisurely lunches. No one to answer to. Nothing so pressing that it can’t be postponed …”

  I checked the clock over Ken’s office door. “Look at the time! Four thirty already! I have to run.”

  Meredith’s eerie sixth sense kicked in. “After all you’ve been through, you’re at it again, aren’t you?”

  I folded the paper with my next two assignments and shoved it inside my pocketbook. “No comment,” I answered.

  18

  Call it a hunch, but Kevin Sheffield and Jennifer Whitley seemed to have a more pressing reason to see Jason Whitley dead than anyone else in town. Jennifer had become increasingly unhap
py with Jason, despite her claims that she had grown accustomed to his infidelity. Her reasons for staying with her husband were beginning to sound awfully lame. And Sheffield had been at the high school the night of the library incident. He had both the motive and the opportunity to kill Jennifer’s husband. Their affair had been ongoing. They could have planned the murder together.

  I watched the front entrance from my mother’s red Sentra in the teachers’ lot where Jason Whitley met his untimely death, and hoped Sheffield’s vice-principal duties would keep him at the high school long after dismissal.

  My hunch turned out to be right. Kevin Sheffield left Harbor Regional just after five o’clock and drove his silver Dodge sedan straight to The Press Box, the cramped, dreary bar across the highway from the Town Crier offices.

  Normally, Crier employees flocked to The Press Box after work, but there were only a few cars in the lot. I parked my mother’s car in the back near the delivery door and crept around to the front of the building. As I trailed Kevin Sheffield, I did my best to look inconspicuous in my oversized sunglasses and my matching Hanes for Her neon green sweatpants and top. Unlike Kate, I wasn’t exactly the height of fashion. I looked like a mom who needed to knock back a few gin and tonics to soothe her nerves after a grueling day with the kiddies.

  Though dark inside, the bar still had enough light for Sheffield to recognize me. I left my sunglasses on and walked close to the booths. There were only two other men at the bar—the bartender and a young guy in grimy jeans and work boots. I lowered my head and tiptoed past Sheffield, stealth-like, until a hand emerged from the shadows and closed around my wrist.

  “Ahhgg!” I shrieked, both surprised and terrified by the unexpected encounter.

  Ken Rhodes sat inside the darkened booth. He looked mildly amused by my outburst and let go of my wrist.

  The men at the bar turned on their stools and stared. I thought up a clever, Kate-Fleming-like excuse. “I’m sorry. I thought I saw a mouse!”

  “You got mice, Vic,” one of the guys told the bartender.