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

by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  I wasn’t convinced. “My Sara did so well in Algebra I. How could she sink so low in Algebra II if he was that good?”

  “How should I know?” he said.

  “Do you honestly think twenty thousand is an incentive for murder?” I asked him.

  “Sure, at least for some people. Just cover the memorial. Chat with the teachers. Find out what’s going on.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  6

  I met up with Willy Rojas in the hallway outside Tranquil Harbor Regional High School’s massive auditorium. The youngest staff photographer at the Crier wore an ancient Metallica T-shirt and scruffy jeans. His dark hair looked windblown, most likely from driving with his Jeep’s top down. A brand-new digital Nikon swung from a strap around his neck.

  I gave the strap a playful tug. “Can you afford this on your salary?”

  “It beats laying out big bucks on fancy jogging shoes.”

  “My running shoes are almost as old as you are,” I said. “By the way, how did you get to the field so fast that day?”

  “Plain, old-fashioned police scanner. How are you, Colleen? You’re not looking so hot.”

  I took a deep breath and let go of the camera. “I guess you heard about my husband.”

  “Who hasn’t? April isn’t your month, and you still have a week to go. What’s next?”

  “I don’t know. It could always be worse. At least I’m alive, which is more than I can say for Jason Whitley.”

  Willy glanced over my shoulder and groaned. “Hope you can survive this. Kevin Sheffield’s coming this way.”

  Harbor Regional’s vice principal weaved through the students filing into the auditorium. He looked like the Hollywood version of academic—thin wire rim glasses, tweed jacket with elbow patches, too slender of face and too slight of build.

  “Press?” he asked eagerly as he approached us.

  “We’re from the Town Crier. I’m Willy Rojas.”

  “I remember you. Class of 2008,” Sheffield said.

  “And this is Colleen Caruso. She’s covering the memorial for her column.”

  “Sara’s mom?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I braced myself. Sara had been a handful at home since Neil moved out. I wondered if her moodiness had carried over to school.

  “She’s a beautiful child,” Mr. Sheffield told me. “So polite. So intelligent.”

  My Sara?

  “But I do wonder how recent developments at home will affect her. Poor girl, with her father running off like that and all.”

  I hated that this miserable little man knew Neil left us. I longed to wrap Willy’s camera strap around his throat. Instead, I took the high road. “Sara’s a great kid, Mr. Sheffield, but right now my focus is on Jason Whitley.”

  “I read your story in the paper about how you discovered the body. I understand you fell over him,” he said.

  I hunted for my notebook and pen in my oversized bag and mustered up a thin slice of dignity. “I’d rather not discuss it right now.”

  “Of course not. You have a service to cover.” I caught a tinge of disappointment in his voice.

  “Mr. Sheffield, how is the school handling Mr. Whitley’s death?” I asked.

  “We have a substitute to cover his classes. It isn’t much of a problem because it’s late in the school year—only two months until summer vacation. We’ll hire a permanent replacement by the time classes begin in the fall.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Either Sheffield was far too absorbed in class schedules or the man suffered from a mental affliction.

  “I guess I didn’t make myself clear. I’m more interested in how the students and faculty are coping with Mr. Whitley’s murder.”

  “Is it officially a murder?” Sheffield asked. “Are the police calling it a homicide?”

  “I suppose, Mr. Sheffield. But I’d rather focus this story on the students and the teachers. How are they handling the trauma of Mr. Whitley’s death—however he died? I’m thinking more of a human interest piece here, not a whodunit.”

  “I see! We had a grief counselor in last Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, only a handful of students took advantage …” he began, but stopped when someone tested the sound system in the auditorium. “We’re going to have to end this now. The service is about to begin, and I have to be up on the stage.”

  Sheffield trotted off to a side door and disappeared. Willy and I looked at each other, baffled by the man’s lack of compassion.

  “Sensitive guy,” Willy muttered.

  I grabbed a couple of programs from a girl passing them out in the hallway and gave one to Willy. “Do you think there’s a reason he’s so callous?”

  “Do I think he’s a killer? That’s hard to say. Are you fishing for murder suspects?”

  “No,” I said. “Just general trolling.”

  I followed Willy inside, and we found seats in the last row. The auditorium was packed with restless students waiting for the memorial service to both begin and end so they could return to their regular classes, their shortened lunch periods, and their friends. I looked for Sara among the sea of bright clothes and pimply faces but couldn’t find her.

  Things hadn’t changed much at Harbor Regional since my own high school days. The seats and stage curtains were still the same bordello red. The halls were still crowded, and Leo Fender, who appeared embalmed but functional as he crossed the stage, still served as the school principal.

  Fender tapped on the microphone. “Can everyone hear me?”

  The student body, like a single, breathing organism, shouted back, “Nooooo!”

  The old man ignored them. “We have assembled here this morning to honor the memory of our esteemed teacher, colleague, and friend—Jason Whitley. The tragic loss of one so young, so vital, so dear to the hearts of …”

  Willy worked his way down the center aisle to get his shots while I focused on the five people seated in metal folding chairs beside the podium: vice principal Sheffield, teacher Stanley Da Silva, guidance counselor Betty Vernon, student Chris Grasso, and Jennifer Whitley, Jason’s widow. The group appeared solemn and nodded their heads in mutual agreement as Leo Fender recited Whitley’s numerous fictional virtues.

  They all looked as guilty as sin.

  The vice principal approached the lectern to introduce the speakers. He uttered an abrupt statement and called upon those seated to share their thoughts with the assembly.

  Stanley Da Silva, Harbor Regional’s basketball coach and Algebra I teacher, ambled to the podium when his name was called. I knew him from the Little League field, as well as from dozens of newspapers stories years ago. Long Stan Silva, as he was called in his youth, had been a key player on the high school basketball team and brought the Harbor Sharks all the way to the state finals—the first and last season the team managed a winning record. Da Silva attended Rutgers on a full athletic scholarship, and the Scarlet Knights center was thought to have promising NBA future. Unfortunately, a knee injury put his pro-basketball plans to rest. He transferred to Kean University, received his certification, married his high school sweetheart, and returned to Harbor Regional to teach. The words of commemoration Da Silva read from a three-by-five-inch index card were brief and so generic that they could have applied to any dead teacher.

  Guidance counselor Betty Vernon followed Da Silva. Over six feet tall in heels, the Amazon warrior sauntered to the podium in three long, glorious strides. Streaked spiral curls cascaded down her back. Her low-cut, flimsy blouse exposed a full three inches of astounding cleavage. There were rumors about the guidance counselor and Jason Whitley, but academic settings were always ripe for gossip. Her one-size-fits-all words of grief could have come directly from a textbook on funeral etiquette.

  Christian Grasso, the student on the stage, spoke next. The kid looked like a very young Leonardo DiCaprio—blue eyes, blond hair, great teeth. He mumbled a few words about Whitley’s teaching skills and how sorely he would be missed. The boy captivated my Sa
ra. Besides her weight and the absence of her father, she talked of little else. I leaned forward for a better look at the object of my child’s affections.

  Only one speaker remained, the newly widowed Jennifer Whitley. As with many moms in Tranquil Harbor, my acquaintance with her stemmed from the Little League field, particularly while performing mandatory grill duty at the concession stand. Her nine-year-old son, Jay-Jay, played on my Bobby’s team. Jennifer’s hair was the color of the bottled honey that came in bear-shaped jars. She looked peculiar amid the baskets of red carnations brought in for the service. For some reason she’d chosen to wear a lavender dress—as if she’d searched her closet and settled on her Easter outfit for the sad occasion. I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d worn the day she put Jason Whitley in the ground. The widow’s words were solemn, even if her outfit wasn’t. She thanked everyone for their kindness and returned to her metal folding chair before the seat got cold.

  Old Man Fender ended the service with a few more well-chosen words. The biggest surprise of the memorial was the almost total lack of emotion. No one seemed all that broken up over Jason Whitley’s death.

  I scribbled stale, hollow phrases taken from the speeches at the podium and added some personal observations. The Town Crier’s readers would drink in every word. Whitley’s death was the biggest scandal to hit Tranquil Harbor since Mayor Bigelow ran off with Sister Gemma from St. Michael’s By the Sea School way back in 1985.

  As estimated in the program, it took less than an hour to summarize the attributes of Jason Whitley—thirty-seven minutes, to be exact.

  I knew Ken Rhodes was on to something. The paper would get a lot of mileage from columns that mentioned Whitley’s death and the ongoing investigation. Still, an important question lingered—who up on that stage hated Jason Whitley enough to kill him?

  * * *

  Willy and I found Meredith hunched over her desk editing a story. She looked up from her work when she saw us.

  “How did the memorial service go?” Meredith leaned back in her chair. “Were there lots of teary-eyed girls? Devastated faculty? Widow dressed in mourning from head to toe, sobbing into a black lace hanky and ready for another Xanax?”

  “There wasn’t a damp eye in the house,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “Let’s see. The student body resented the intrusion on their lunch periods, the faculty appeared less than brokenhearted, and the grieving widow, dressed for the Easter Parade, managed to hold herself together with very little effort.”

  “You can’t write that!”

  I turned to see Ken Rhodes standing across the aisle, listening in on the conversation.

  “I don’t intend to write it up that way,” I told him. “The memorial service was dignified and everyone behaved like good little soldiers. That’s more or less what I’ll write. “

  “May I have a word with you in my office, Brenda Starr?”

  Now what? I thought.

  I followed Rhodes back to his office. My insecurity kicked in, much the same as in high school when I’d been called into the principal’s office for blowing off first period and hitting the diner for breakfast with my friends.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “Just a few minor points.”

  “Like, don’t make it personal?” I guessed.

  “No, just the opposite. Do make it personal. Just keep any hunches and insights that might get us sued out of your stories. Remember, you’re not doing this to solve a murder. You’re doing this to increase our circulation.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And I’ll need the memorial service column by tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay.” I knew I had a long night ahead of me.

  “You’ll need to talk to some of Whitley’s friends and colleagues over the next couple of weeks for the next column. I’ll bet our readers would love to hear something about Jennifer Whitley. What do you know about her?”

  I glanced out the window behind Rhodes’s desk. “Well, let’s see. At the moment she’s single …”

  Rhodes rolled his eyes.

  “She’s pretty, but not a raving beauty. She can be tight-lipped at times. Being married to Jason Whitley, she probably never got the chance to get a word in edgewise.”

  “Is she capable of killing her husband?” he asked impatiently.

  “All women are capable of killing their husbands,” I informed him, thinking of Neil.

  “Can you talk to her, feel her out, maybe get an interview? How well do you know her?”

  “Not well enough to drop by her house for coffee and bagels, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How about at a PTA meeting or church, or maybe you can sit near her at the baseball field? Your kids both play on the same team, don’t they?”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  He shrugged, as he often did when posed with a question he didn’t feel deserved an answer.

  “Ron Haver, I’m sure,” I said. “There’s a game tonight, but I doubt Jay-Jay will show up to play so soon after his father’s death. I can check the schedule to see if Jennifer Whitley signed up for kitchen duty.”

  “Can you work a concession stand?” Rhodes asked.

  “I can burn burgers as well as any other mother in town.”

  “And you should speak to that teacher, the other one up for that award,” he said. “The assistant coach.”

  I shook my head. “Da Silva leaves right after the games, and there’s no chance to talk to him when he’s on the field. He’s busy pretending he knows how to win.”

  Rhodes appeared to think it over. “I heard he plans to run a basketball clinic this summer. Maybe you can write that up.”

  “That’s a sports story,” I said.

  “It’s happening in town. And I’ve already expanded your assignments. I’m the executive editor, Colleen. I can do anything I want.”

  You certainly can with me, I thought, and immediately felt stunned by the notion. I was still grieving over Neil’s betrayal and the breakup of my marriage, yet apparently my anguish wasn’t a terminal condition.

  Rhodes pulled his wallet from his back pocket and fished out a business card. “When you do finally get the chance to talk to Jennifer Whitley, call my cell phone and let me know what you think.”

  I took the card, smiled, and reminded myself that my thoughts about some things were all my own, and I didn’t have to share them with anybody.

  7

  The Monday night Little League game wound down to the last inning, and the Pirates were losing once again. Bevin sat beside me on the top row in the bleachers, elegant in a turquoise cardigan with a matching mock turtleneck beneath. I had on sweatpants, a cotton T-shirt, and the hooded Jets sweatshirt Neil forgot to pack the night he moved in with his skinny partner. The crisp spring air did little to invigorate our lackluster players.

  “Can you believe this?” Bevin said, exasperated. “What’s Haver teaching these kids—how to lose gracefully?”

  “Gracefully?” I pointed to the outfield. Bobby, with his eye on what should have been an easy out, tripped over the chalk foul line and flubbed the catch. “Maybe Haver should spend a little more time on practice and a little less time on surveillance.”

  “You mean the unmarked county car?” Bev asked. “I saw it parked out by my curb.”

  “He has a perfect view of my living room window over there. I think he’s watching me.”

  Bev looked at me like I just dropped in from Mars. “You think what?”

  “I think he has me under surveillance.”

  “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 sor
t 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.

  * * *