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

by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  “Then I’m missing your point,” she said. “There wasn’t any blood.”

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “The newspaper said there weren’t any signs of a struggle.”

  “The newspapers print the information supplied by the police. What if the cops never told them about the blood?”

  “Ron would have told me,” Kate said. “We have an open, honest relationship!”

  I had to laugh. “Don’t be so naïve. Men don’t have open, honest relationships. I guess Haver isn’t as dumb as he looks.”

  “Ron doesn’t look dumb!”

  I sighed. “It’s just an expression.”

  “So what if Whitley was killed here?” she asked. “What difference does it make?”

  “It means the killer had an association with the high school and was very familiar with the layout of the grounds. That would let Bevin off the hook.”

  “What makes you think Bev didn’t know Whitley’s schedule and wait for him to leave the school?”

  “She wasn’t involved with Whitley on a day-to-day basis. She didn’t know his schedule and didn’t care. They had trysts. It wasn’t love—or even lust. Besides, if she happened to go inside, she would have been noticed. Everyone notices Bevin.”

  Kate started the car. “So what do we do now?”

  “I’ll call Ken Rhodes when I get home and tell him about the yearbook. Meanwhile, don’t mention the bookcase incident to Ron. I’m getting enough flack as it is with my accidents.”

  “Not a word! I swear!” she promised.

  That meant she would call Ron Haver the minute she got home.

  16

  “It’s almost nine thirty, Mother!” Sara whined when I walked through the front door. Her greetings were always more like accusations. She sat on the sofa and clutched a throw pillow, her face set in her patented mad at the world expression.

  “I’m sorry, Sara. I had a newspaper interview.”

  “It’s Thursday night! I was supposed to go out with my friends, but no—I’m stuck here with Bobby. The phone’s been ringing off the hook, and there’s nothing on TV. I’m bored to death!”

  “Who’s been calling here?” I asked her.

  “Telemarketers, I guess. Hang ups. It’s just not fair! I have a life, after all! I’m always stuck at home. I feel like Cinderella!”

  “I can’t stop the telemarketers from calling, Cinderella. As far as Bobby goes, you could have sent him over to Grandma.” Apparently, it had slipped her mind that we have lived directly behind my parents’ house since she was five years old.

  “I did send him over. He’s sleeping there tonight.”

  “Then what are you so mad about?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” she said.

  I honestly didn’t. “Sara, your drudgery here is done for the day. It isn’t a tragedy. You missed one night out with your friends.”

  “They all went to the mall to eat and catch a movie—without me, naturally.”

  “I said I was sorry,” I told her.

  “You don’t sound sorry!”

  My hand ached and my head felt like it got caught in a vise. Worse, I had skipped dinner and my stomach rumbled like I hadn’t eaten in a week. There was no way I could deal with my put-upon daughter. “Lose the mood, Sara. I mean it. We all have problems. Not just you.”

  Sara jumped up off the sofa and went to the sliding door in the kitchen. “You simply don’t understand! I’m staying at Grandma’s house tonight. At least she listens to me!”

  I watched Sara go through the backyard shortcut and called Ken Rhodes from the kitchen phone. His phone went directly to voice mail, and I left a message about the yearbook. Both Bobby and Sara would be spending the night with my parents. My husband would be in the arms of his skinny bimbo. I was alone and in pain—the perfect opportunity to console myself with Vincenzo’s delivery. Vincenzo’s was the premier pizza place in Tranquil Harbor. The pies were crusty and bubbly, the sauce deep red and homemade. Best of all, Vincenzo didn’t rob you blind with his prices. It was two-for-one calzone night, and I thought I could easily polish off the second calzone tomorrow if the kids didn’t get to it first.

  I phoned in my order and readied the kitchen table for work and my meal. The delivery man rang the doorbell twenty minutes later, and the amazing aroma of two medium cheese and pepperoni calzones filled the room. I unwrapped one of the calzones and opened the Harbor Regional yearbook. After flipping only one page and taking a small bite of my dinner, the doorbell chimed again.

  I pushed the calzone aside and went to the front door peephole.

  Ken Rhodes stood there, looking good even under the sickly yellow glow of my porch light.

  “Want to open up, or are you pretending you’re not home?” he asked.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a verbal tussle with Rhodes. I couldn’t imagine what brought the executive editor to my door at the ungodly hour of ten o’clock. He had never been to my house before. I was surprised he even knew where I lived.

  I fumbled with the deadbolt and threw open the door.

  Ken Rhodes looked his usual less-than-cheerful self. With the kind of night I’d had, Rhodes seemed a whole lot less appetizing than the calzones I’d left behind in the kitchen.

  “What brings you here?” I asked.

  “A dying cell phone,” he told me. “All I get is static. I figured I’d catch you in person. Do I get to come in, or should I stand out here and give your neighbors something to talk about?”

  “I already give my neighbors plenty to talk about.” I stepped aside and thought about the ricotta cheese, soft and warm, that seeped from my dinner. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “I bought calzones from Vincenzo’s. It was buy one, get one free night. There’s an extra.”

  Rhodes followed me into the kitchen. “Sure. Anything from Vincenzo’s. I see you’re using the fine china tonight.”

  I grabbed a paper plate from the cabinet and gave Rhodes a plastic cup from the eco-unfriendly tower I kept on the table for the kids. “I’m using the Waterford crystal, too. I have Diet Coke, fat-free milk, and cranberry juice. Pick your poison.”

  “What happened to your hand?” Rhodes asked.

  “My hand? Oh, my hand !” It had begun to swell, and a rectangular bruise was starting to appear. I pointed to the yearbook on the table. “Someone pushed a bookcase on me when I stole that from the high school library.”

  “The library police get tougher every year.”

  “It wasn’t the library police,” I told him. “I think this must be a very important book to someone.”

  “First your head, now your hand.”

  “And I also caught a book in the noggin tonight. Technically, that would be twice in the head.”

  “That explains a lot,” he said.

  “Very funny. I’m lucky I stayed conscious. Poor Kate has a limp. I hope she didn’t break an ankle on her high heels.”

  “Dear God! The two of you went? You don’t happen to have something a little stronger than diet soda hiding somewhere, do you? I’ll need it if I have to listen to another one of your exploits.”

  “Take a look on the top shelf in the cabinet next to the refrigerator,” I said.

  Rhodes easily reached into the cabinet without the aid of a step stool. A show-off, my mother would have said.

  “You have a pretty good supply here,” he said. “I guess your ex is a drinking man.”

  “Not really. Neil just drives others to drink.”

  Ken poured his drink and sat down at the table. I slid the other calzone out of the greasy takeout bag and onto a paper plate, then sat down to join him.

  “You were at the high school tonight to interview Stanley Da Silva about the basketball clinic. Is that where the swollen hand comes in?”

  “My hand got caught between a book and Kate’s hip bone. It seems the high school library is about as safe as Afghanistan.”

  “You interviewed Da Silva in the library?” he asked.


  “No. I interviewed him in the gym office,” I explained. “My sister remembered Jason Whitley and his pals from high school. I decided at least one of them, or maybe more, would like to see him dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Kate said that whole crowd was strange. So after I interviewed Da Silva, we made a little side trip to the library to steal a yearbook. I wanted to find out exactly what went on back in Whitley’s high school days.”

  I took a huge bite of my calzone and chewed until my jaw hurt. I washed it down with a swig of diet soda.

  “You eat like a dock worker, Colleen,” Rhodes observed.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. Leave me alone. I’m starving. I had a tough night.”

  “Besides Da Silva, did you happen to run into anyone else at the high school?” he asked.

  “The custodians, of course. And Betty Vernon and Kevin Sheffield. They were arguing in the main office. The Vernon creature towered over Sheffield. She looked like she could beat him to death with no trouble at all. I talked to Betty later on, before Kate and I found the library. She seemed her usual self. Cocky. Sarcastic. But nonviolent.”

  “What about Sheffield?”

  “He looked embarrassed about the argument.”

  Rhodes tapped the yearbook. “Memorabilia. 1995. Was that a good year?”

  “I doubt it. Not with Whitley and his cronies there.”

  Rhodes opened the book and went straight to the senior pictures.

  “Look up Da Silva. He’d be first alphabetically,” I said.

  Rhodes flipped the pages to the Ds. “There’s old Stanley. He looks like he weighed about eighty pounds soaking wet back then.”

  “Very Ichabod Crane,” I said.

  Ken Rhodes pointed to a picture on the opposite page. “This one is vaguely familiar. Elizabeth Cunniff. That’s Betty Vernon, isn’t it? She must have married somewhere along the way. Big hair.”

  I pulled the book closer to me. “The Madonna-eighties look was still hot in Tranquil Harbor in the mid-nineties.”

  “What does that say beneath her picture?”

  I had to squint to read the small print. “Varsity Cheerleader. Winter.”

  Rhodes pointed to Da Silva’s picture. “Stanley made varsity basketball and baseball in his sophomore year. He was varsity for both all the way through his senior year. And Math Team president. It says here his favorite saying was, ‘Just give me the stats.’ ”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “My guess would be he was into statistics. He played baseball and basketball. He probably kept track of his hits, or strikeouts if he was a pitcher.”

  “He sure knows his own stats on the basketball court.” I took a bite of my lukewarm calzone and turned the pages. “Everyone in that little group seemed to excel at something or other. And Kate said they were a competitive bunch.”

  “So who’s next?” Ken asked. His drink slowly disappeared. The calzone wasn’t keeping pace.

  “We should find Jennifer Whitley, I guess, but I don’t know the grieving widow’s maiden name.”

  “Start at the beginning and look at anyone named Jennifer,” Rhodes suggested.

  We started at the beginning of the pictures and worked our way to almost the very end. Jennifer seemed to be a popular name for girls born in the late seventies. There were six in Harbor Regional’s 1995 graduating class. They all looked pretty much alike. Tons of curls, lots of mascara, and lip gloss that could blind you with its glare.

  “Here she is!” I said as soon as I saw the soft eyes and light gray shade of hair in the black-and-white photo. “Jennifer Talmidge!”

  “Varsity Cheerleader. Winter. It’s been a long time since I was in high school. Why specifically winter? What’s the difference?” Rhodes asked.

  “The winter squad cheers for basketball.”

  Rhodes took a bite of his calzone and washed it down with the Johnnie Walker Red from the plastic cup. He seemed to mull over the information in the yearbook.

  “Is something coming to you or do you just slip into trances all of a sudden?” I asked.

  “Stanley Da Silva played basketball. Isn’t it interesting that Jennifer Whitley and Betty Vernon were specifically winter cheerleaders?”

  I thought the same thing. “Did Jason Whitley play basketball?”

  Rhodes flipped the pages. Shots of tuxedo-clad boys and girls with off-the-shoulder, black formal tops blurred by.

  The face of a young Jason Whitley leapt from the page—skin flawless and eyes confident as he looked into the camera lens. Beneath his picture, his accomplishments read like a Who’s Who in the world of 1995 secondary school students: Academic Team, Debate Team, Senior Class Council, National Honor Society, Math Team, and Varsity Basketball.

  “A sport? How did that manage to sneak its way in?” Ken asked.

  “Whitley and Da Silva both played basketball. How about Kevin Sheffield?”

  Rhodes flipped through the yearbook while I polished off my calzone. “Here he is. Kevin Sheffield. Varsity Basketball. National Honor Society. That’s all.”

  I glanced at Sheffield’s picture—thin face, glasses, no smile for the camera. He was unimpressive back then, every bit as bland as he was currently. “They were all on the same team and most likely all good friends,” I told Rhodes. “Let’s move on and see what else we can find.”

  I flipped through the middle of the yearbook. Here were mostly candid shots of sports, classes, and school plays. I stopped at class dance photos and slid the book over to Rhodes. “Take a look. Jennifer Talmidge is the Homecoming Queen. Is that Jason Whitley with her?”

  “It sure is. And here’s the Holiday Ball. Winter Queen—Elizabeth Cunniff. Escorted by Jason Whitley,” he said.

  “There’s Stanley Da Silva with Grace Morrow,” I said, pointing to another picture. “That’s a new name. She must have been one of that group.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s Da Silva’s wife,” Ken said. “I thought I read somewhere he married his high school sweetheart. And look here. Senior Prom pictures. That’s Jason Whitley with Stanley Da Silva’s Holiday Ball date. He’s all over Grace Morrow. By the way, how did the interview with Da Silva go?”

  “He’s a complete bore with a super-inflated ego. He seemed obsessed with himself—nothing new there, but he also got it into his head that someone is knocking off nominees for that dumb Teacher of the Year award.”

  “We should be so lucky,” Rhodes said.

  “I did discover a couple of interesting things after the bookcase fell on me. Kate and I wandered into this recycling room. Turns out they save important papers and documents for shredding there. The janitor told us Jason Whitley was rummaging through the bins for test papers the night before he disappeared.”

  “So? Maybe he accidentally tossed out something. I do it all the time. Don’t you?”

  “I guess I have,” I admitted.

  “Which proves my point. He probably threw them out by mistake,” Rhodes said. “What was the other thing you discovered after the library?”

  “Outside in the parking lot, there’s a strip of land with overgrown shrubs that hides the soccer field. It’s so dense, you could lose a school bus in there. It makes that section of the parking lot very secluded. I think that could be where Jason Whitley got himself killed.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “You’re not impressed with my deductive reasoning?”

  “Whitley’s body was dumped, and he was last seen at the high school,” Rhodes told me. “It’s not too much of a stretch to assume the murder took place around that area.”

  “Yeah, but I think we parked in the spot where Jason Whitley bit the big one!”

  The comment caught Rhodes by surprise, and he couldn’t hold back the laugh. A mouthful of tea-colored liquid sprayed from his mouth. I grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped the table. Rhodes used half a roll of paper towels to wipe down the wall.

  “The light’s blinking on your answer
ing machine,” he said as he cleaned around it.

  “I guess Sara got tired of picking up the phone.”

  I pressed the button to play the messages. There were only two:

  “Hi. It’s Grandma. Pick up the phone, Sara. I hate talking to machines! Come over for supper. I’ll make you a nice salad. You should eat some red meat. You’re nothing but skin and bones.”

  The machine beeped and went to the next message—a hang up, most likely one of Sara’s hated telemarketers. I erased both messages and turned off the auto answer. As if on cue, the phone rang. I picked up and said “hello,” but didn’t get an answer.

  “Hello?” I repeated, annoyed. “Talk or I’m hanging up!”

  “Colleen Caruso?” the caller whispered, barely audible.

  “Hello? Yes? I can’t hear you!”

  A distant click broke the connection. I slammed the phone down on the table and turned to Ken Rhodes. “I hate these telemarketers! I’m on the Do Not Call Registry and they still keep calling. What else do I have to do? I wish there was a way to trace these people and report them!”

  Rhodes picked up the phone and pressed the menu button. “There is.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking Caller ID for the last incoming number.”

  I slapped my sore head. How simple!

  Ken pressed the talk button and put the phone on speaker as it automatically dialed.

  “Nothing,” I said as it rang on the other end.

  “Let it ring a little longer,” Rhodes told me.

  Finally, someone answered. A huge, bellowing voice shouted, “The building’s empty! Call back tomorrow morning!”

  I knew the voice but couldn’t place it.

  “Who is this?” Rhodes demanded.

  “Johnny Lynch. The building’s empty. There’s nobody here.”

  “What building?” Rhodes asked. “Where am I calling?”

  “Tranquil Harbor Regional High School. You called the main office,” he said, and I knew exactly who the voice belonged to. It was the potbellied janitor, the man who helped me and Kate up off the floor in the library and caught us trespassing in the recycling room.

  I touched Rhodes’s arm to get his attention and shook my head no. The custodian had no reason to call me. He was a loud, helpful man who didn’t know my name or anything about me.