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

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  About the author

  Also available from Cup of Tea Books

  New Math

  Is Murder

  Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  Cup of Tea Books

  An Imprint of PageSpring Publishing

  www.cupofteabooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations for use in a review, article, or blog. For more information, contact PageSpring Publishing at www.pagespringpublishing.com.

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by PageSpring Publishing

  Published in the United States by Cup of Tea Books, an imprint of PageSpring Publishing

  www.cupofteabooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-939403-25-4

  Cover design by Sarah Allgire

  To Big Mike and the kids:

  Michael, Jessica, Damian, and Meredith

  I love you all—forever and ever.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, special thanks to L.A. Frazier for helping me to whip my manuscript into shape, and Rebecca Seum, Publisher/Editor at Cup of Tea Books for her brilliant editing skills.

  I would also like to thank my friends and loved ones— Beverly Haaf, novelist and editor of the Beverly Bee, for her good advice, author and attorney Anna Lascurain, whose constant phone calls (“You’d better be writing, Reccoppa!”) bordered on nagging, and the endlessly encouraging Georgia Oppella, who helped me to believe in myself.

  Last, but definitely not least, my sincere gratitude goes out to Peggy Primiano, the Special Sections Editor at Greater Media Newspapers, who gave me a plethora of topics to write about for many, many years.

  1

  The alarm clock blasted at 6:15 a.m. I had purposely set it early the night before, determined to jog off the ten stubborn pounds that my soon-to-be ex-husband, Neil, found offensive. I rolled over too far when I reached for the snooze button and tumbled off the side of the bed. It felt like the entire house shook.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” my daughter called out. Because she was a sixteen-year-old, Sara worried about everything I did. She had been watching me closely lately and scrutinizing my every word like she was sizing me up for a mental competency hearing.

  I smacked the top of the alarm clock and cut off the noise. “I’m fine, Sara!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I fell out of bed. That’s all.”

  “Oh! Ohh-kay!” The kid dragged out the words like I was the village idiot.

  Since I was already down on the floor, I reached under my bed for my ancient Sauconys and crawled over to the dresser to find roomy sweats. I made a quick bathroom pit stop, dragged a toothbrush across my teeth, and used my fingers to comb through my knotted dark curls. I tried to avoid the mirror but couldn’t. A new wrinkle had mysteriously appeared beneath my left eye sometime during the night.

  “You’re gonna need a better eye gel, Colleen,” I told myself. “That or a face-lift.”

  I turned away and ran down the stairs.

  “Breakfast in twenty minutes!” I called to the kids before dashing out the front door of my split-level.

  A glorious spring morning, the kind that makes young couples eager to plunk down hefty deposits on dream homes in the New Jersey suburbs, greeted me. The sun glistened gold on the grass, the newly green shrubs, and the wet trophy cars in neighboring driveways. It had stormed the night before, and a tangy scent of damp pine lingered in the air, holding a promise of warmer weather to come.

  I trotted off toward the woods that separate our development from the heavy shore traffic on Route 35. Near the end of the street, Old Lady Testino, Steinbeck Avenue’s resident busybody, peeked out from behind her living room drapes. I waved and continued to the end of the block. After making a quick right at the entrance to the Little League field, I sprinted across the parking lot and cut into the woods by way of a narrow path beside the bright green concession stand.

  Dodging low, newly budding branches, I rounded a bend, tripped, and landed flat on my face.

  “What the … ?” I mumbled as I rolled over to sit up.

  Getting tripped up is nothing new for me, but this time, my clumsiness had nothing to do with my fall. There was a man stretched out on his back across the jogging path—a very still man.

  With a big gash on his forehead.

  I stumbled over him simply because I never saw him.

  “Um … excuse me?” I said. He didn’t reply.

  My foot had gotten caught somehow in his jacket pocket. I kicked my leg to free myself and scrambled to my feet. The guy didn’t move.

  Something was very wrong.

  When I stepped back to catch my breath, I realized I knew him.

  Flyers with Jason Whitley’s face had been stapled to telephone poles all over town. He was Sara’s algebra teacher, and he had been missing for two days. All at once, I understood why he looked so stiff and unresponsive. My yuck meter skyrocketed. Mr. Whitley wasn’t lying on the jogging path to take a short nap.

  This guy was dead.

  2

  I tried not to look, but I had to. The position of Jason Whitley’s body confused me. Something seemed wrong—not that I had ever encountered a dead body outside a casket before. Logic suggested an Algebra II teacher who tripped and smacked his head on a rock during a run would surely have landed flat on his kisser—not flat on his back. Could he have tripped, fallen, hit his head hard enough to cause a gash, yet landed face-up? I knew the rain during the night would have washed the blood away. There was nothing mysterious there. But the face-up part? I had my doubts.

  I ran down the path in a panic, yelling for help. By the time I reached the blacktop, people had emerged from nearby houses to see what all the commotion was about. Dogs barked furiously. A siren shrieked from somewhere nearby. Presently, a Tranquil Harbor black-and-white cruiser roared into the Little League parking lot and screeched to a stop beside me.

  “Jason Whitley’s on my jogging path. There’s a cut on his head!” I babbled. “He looks kinda …”

  “Dead?” a young cop guessed through the cruiser’s open window. He looked barely old enough to shave. His casual attitude irritated me.

  “I didn’t stop to check for a pulse! Maybe you could step out of the car and come take a look—if you have the time,” I snapped.

  “I have some time,” the young cop told me, unperturbed. “Can you show me where you found Mr. Whitley?”

  He got out of the car and came beside me, a slender, fresh-faced kid of a cop. For the first time in my life, I felt like a very old woman. He to
ok my arm, letting me lead him beyond the concession stand and into the woods. We stayed close to the path and only strayed to avoid the puddles.

  “Stay right here!” the policeman ordered when we rounded the bend. He stood back and studied the scene for just a moment and then knelt beside the body and placed two fingers on the side of Whitley’s neck.

  “You’re right.” He sighed. “He’s dead. We have to go back to the lot so I can call in. The county will handle this.”

  “The county?” I asked.

  “County prosecutor’s office.”

  We walked back. I knew the county handled big crimes. That meant the young cop thought Whitley was murdered.

  Could someone have hated this teacher enough to kill him?

  Ordinarily, I loved a good murder. Reading tales of mass murderers, serial killers, and slaughter in the heat of passion gave me more joy than hitting three sevens on the slots in Atlantic City.

  Classic murder cases intrigued me—the famous crimes that were legend: Leopold and Loeb, Jack the Ripper, and Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia. Maniacal murder, both real and imagined, captivated me. I found Hannibal Lecter far more appealing than James Bond. Given the choice, I would have rather delved into the psyches of Lizzie Borden and Ed Gein than Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt any day of the week.

  Okay, I would have made an exception for Brad Pitt.

  But the teacher’s death wasn’t fiction. It wasn’t classic either. Nobody would ever consider Jason Whitley the stuff of legends.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” the young cop asked when we reached his squad car.

  Ma’am? Now I really felt like an old lady.

  “I’m Colleen,” I said. “Colleen Caruso.”

  He opened the passenger door and motioned for me to have a seat. “I know. I remember you from Little League.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He didn’t look familiar.

  “My kid brother plays at this field,” he explained.

  Of course he does, I thought. A cop young enough to have a baby brother in Little League! I not only felt very old, I felt positively ancient.

  “You might as well relax, Mrs. Caruso. This could take a while.”

  “Thank you, Officer …”

  “O’Reilly. James O’Reilly.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said automatically.

  If nothing else, we were certainly polite in Tranquil Harbor, even under the worst of circumstances.

  Additional squad cars arrived. Police blocked off the entrance to the lot. We stood around, waiting, until an unmarked county car pulled in, followed by the police photographer’s van.

  “Colleen Caruso?” the detective said as soon as he stepped out of the sedan. “Is that you?”

  New Jersey had a curse—in the Garden State, that six degrees of separation theory whittled down to three. When you met someone, you found you already knew him, you knew someone who knew him, or you were somehow related to him. Ours was a small, crowded state. No room for strangers.

  Ron Haver wore a dark, neatly pressed suit, a good contrast to his close-cropped blond hair. At forty-three, he still managed to look like he was in his mid-thirties. I knew Haver worked for the prosecutor’s office. He had been one of my brother’s closest friends in high school and college. I ran into him around town now and then, mostly in places like The Bagel Bungalow and Vincenzo’s Pizzeria, where a quick hello substituted for conversation.

  Haver flashed me a disarming grin. “How have you been, Colleen? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “We haven’t really talked in—it must be about four years now,” I said.

  Haver corrected me at once. “Six, to be exact. I coached your Bobby in Tee Ball.”

  I thought back. Bobby, my baby, had been four and a half at the time. His uniform billowed around his skinny body. I cinched his pants at the waist with a huge safety pin so they wouldn’t fall down when he ran. Haver stuck Bobby in the outfield, where my son pointed at planes and shoved his dirty fingers up his nose while the other kids chased grounders.

  “No more Tee Ball for Bobby.”

  “No more Tee Ball for me either,” Haver informed me. “I’m coaching the Pirates this year with Stanley Da Silva and Eugene Steiner. Bobby’s on our team. Neil never told you?”

  “Neil and I have …”

  “Yeah. I heard. I know all about it,” Haver said. Of course he would. We lived in one of those towns where news travels fast, especially bad news.

  “He never mentioned the Little League situation,” I told him.

  “Among other things apparently,” Haver said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Which is more than I can say for Jason Whitley,” Haver added. “Can you show me where you found him, or would you rather wait here?”

  There were too many curious people gathering near the fence. “I’ll take you into the woods,” I told him.

  This time, Ron Haver held my arm. The police photographer, a skinny young woman, followed behind us with two cameras hanging from straps around her neck. The equipment looked heavy. I half expected her to topple over. Officer O’Reilly walked beside her, chatting.

  “Oh, boy,” Haver said when we rounded the bend. “Stay right here, Colleen. Don’t come any closer.”

  “Like you have to tell me twice?” I told him.

  Haver left my side and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. He approached Jason Whitley with soft, calculated steps, as if afraid he might wake him. He squatted beside the dead teacher and studied his head, his clothes, and the position of the body.

  “You didn’t happen to move him, did you?”

  “The next time I trip over a corpse, I’ll try to be more careful,” I said.

  Ron Haver looked dumbfounded. “You tripped over him?”

  “I don’t look down when I run. I didn’t even see him until after I fell. We sort of got tangled up somehow.”

  “Great,” Haver muttered.

  Young Officer O’Reilly laughed. I failed to see the humor.

  “And I’m guessing this,” the detective said with a sweep of his arm, “is from you crawling all over the scene?”

  I nodded. The damp, sandy soil showed a jumble of footprints and knee indentations where I pulled myself to my feet. How else was I supposed to get up after tripping over a dead guy?

  “Karen, the usual angles. And let’s not forget these footprints,” Haver instructed the police photographer, but I knew that was more for my benefit than hers.

  “I really am sorry,” I said, needing to say something. “I know I messed up the crime scene.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It happens.”

  “I’ll bet all the time,” I said.

  Haver got to his feet. “No. Actually, only once in a great while.”

  What a morning! Not only had I tripped over a corpse and disrupted a crime scene, I never even got in my run. I felt chilly and stupid, and I wanted to go home. I shivered and hugged myself for warmth.

  Haver took hold of my arm and led me away from the body. “Let’s get you out of here. I’ll walk you back to the parking lot.”

  By the time we emerged from the woods, a county hearse had pulled into the lot. Two burly attendants unloaded a stretcher from the back and set it on the blacktop.

  Out on Poe Street, the gawkers gathered beyond the chain-link fence. A news van attempted to enter but was ordered to turn back by a Tranquil Harbor cop.

  “I should call the paper to see who’s around to cover this,” I told Ron.

  “The paper?”

  “The Town Crier. I freelance for them. They should get a photographer down here.”

  Haver reached inside his jacket and pulled out a battered notebook and a gel pen. “I didn’t know you were writing for the Crier. How long?”

  “A couple of months. Someone should be here. After all, it’s local news.”

  “I think your reporters are already here.”

  I scanned the crowd. Wil
ly Rojas, one of six staff photographers with the paper, stood apart from the onlookers with his camera poised, ready to snap away when the attendants brought out the body. By Willy’s side, I recognized Margaret Allen, the beat reporter, by her soft brown curls.

  “Did you know your editor is an old friend of mine?” Haver said.

  “Meredith Mancini is an old friend of yours?” Meredith, my twenty-five-year-old editor, looked about twelve—far too young to be anyone’s old friend.

  “No. Ken Rhodes. The executive editor.”

  Ken Rhodes had started working at the Crier only three weeks ago. Meredith had introduced him when I dropped off an article at the newspaper last week. Though I barely knew Rhodes, what I had seen of him looked impressive enough. Any female with even halfway decent eyesight would call him a stud.

  I spotted nosy Mrs. Testino in the crowd beyond the parking lot, hard to miss in her exclusive Omar-the-Tentmaker housedress and blue-rinsed hair. My Bobby stood in front of her in a wash-worn Devils sweatshirt, his fingers laced in the chain-link fence and his ten-year-old face filled with awe and wonder. Sara watched from nearby, a pretty blonde in a lightweight spring jacket, wearing the cool-bored expression of a sixteen-year-old woman of the world. Their buses would have come and gone. I’d have to give them both a lift to school if I didn’t want them hanging around the house all day pestering me.

  “Can I leave?” I asked Ron Haver, anxious to put the events of the morning behind me.

  “Just a couple of questions.” His face went serious and the niceties were set aside. We’d entered the realm of official police business. “You’re still living up on Steinbeck, right? What’s the house number?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Did you happen to notice what time you started out on your run this morning?”

  “About six thirty, I guess. Maybe a few minutes earlier. We didn’t even have breakfast yet.”

  “And you headed straight for the woods?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?”