Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa - Jersey Girl 01 - New Math Is Murder (22 page)

Bev gulped down half the tumbler. Her eyes went spacey and her fidgety hands stilled.

“We need to do some disaster recovery, Bev,” I told her. “Forgive me for prying into your finances, but exactly how much money do you have? Can you afford a really pricey criminal lawyer? One way or another, you’ll have to call Lucinda Maynard anyway. I don’t think you and Franklin have much of a future.”

“I’ve always kept a little something aside for emergencies. I still have the money from those paintings I sold last November. I’ll call Lucinda for a referral.”

At least that was something positive.

“What were you doing up at the high school the night Jason Whitley was murdered?” I asked her.

Bevin lowered her head. I knew she wouldn’t tell me with Ken Rhodes in the room.

“Would you mind giving me a few minutes alone with Bev?” I asked him.

Rhodes went to the kitchen and snatched my cordless phone off the wall. “You’re in over your head here,” he told Bev. “I’ll step outside and call your lawyer for you. I assume she’s listed?”

Bev nodded. I waited until the front door slammed shut behind him before asking Bev, “Why did you go up to the high school the night Jason Whitley disappeared?”

“This is really embarrassing,” she said.

“It’s gonna get a whole lot more embarrassing if the cops come back and put you in handcuffs. Level with me!”

“You’ve been hanging around cops too much,” Bev told me. “You’re beginning to sound like one.”

“The high school?” I reminded her. “You stopped by to see Jason Whitley. Why?”

“Because I was mad at Franklin. I wanted to see if there was a chance for just one more …”

“Oh, gross!”

Bev nodded. “I agree, but I went to him anyway.”

“How did you ever start this?” I asked.

“I knew Jason from the Little League field, but our first real encounter would be at the beach, I guess, in early January. I went down to the bay to paint. There wasn’t a soul around, and everything had a strange, battleship color that begged to be painted. The sky, the water, even the wharf. Jason happened to be taking a stroll at the time. He stopped to check out my work and started lavishing me with compliments about my style, my keen eye—all that stuff. Artists are such suckers, Colleen. We love flattery
.
So one thing led to another.”

“So you decided to hook up with him because of a chance meeting?”

“I had just learned about Franklin and his hot babe a couple of days before. I was in an ugly mood. That’s probably why all that bleakness at the bay appealed to me. And Jason Whitley could be so charming when he wanted to be. ”

I thought about Whitley’s last night alive. Bevin must have been furious with Franklin to run to Jason Whitley again. “The night he died, did you, um, do it in the classroom?” I asked.

“We didn’t
do it
in the classroom. We didn’t
do it
at all. We just talked.”

“What time did you leave the high school?”

“I don’t know. It was pretty dark outside. Jason came straight to the classroom from a car wash meeting or something like that.”

“Did you pass the custodians at any time?” I asked.

“I saw them. They were mopping the floors.”

“Did they notice you at all?” A stupid question. Bevin Thompson got noticed everywhere she went.

“I don’t know. They looked pretty busy.”

If the custodians saw her, they could easily pick her out in a lineup.

The doorbell rang, and Lucinda Maynard walked in, not bothering to wait for me to open the door. “I’ve already contacted a criminal lawyer for you, just in case,” she told Bevin as she climbed the three steps to the dining room. “I see we’re drinking. Can I get one of those?”

I went to the kitchen and made the lawyer a screwdriver. When I came back, Lucinda was seated at the table with a pad and pen, jotting down notes.

“Can they arrest her?” I asked. “Do they have enough evidence?”

Lucinda smirked. She looked positively frightening. I could see how she had built her reputation—it was through intimidation.

“They got nothing,” she said. “I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I’ll tell you right now, they don’t even have circumstantial evidence. They’re only speculating at this point.”

I handed the drink to Lucinda and took a seat. “Did you talk to the police? How do you know?”

“I live in Tranquil Harbor, Colleen. Everybody knows.”

“Great! The Tranquil Harbor grapevine. I wonder what color jumpsuits they’re wearing in prison these days,” Bev said.

“You’re not going to prison,” she told her. “You didn’t kill Jason Whitley. We’ll prove it.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Bevin lowered her head, and her curls tumbled forward. She could have been playing the part of a tragic heroine or a high fashion model on the very edge of a nervous breakdown. With her wonderful height, Barbie doll waist, and impressive boobs …

“Bev, how much do you weigh?” I asked out of the blue.

“What does my weight have to do with anything?”

“Plenty. How much?”

She thought a moment. “About one twenty. Sometimes near one twenty-five. It fluctuates.”

Lucinda picked up on my train of thought. “How tall are you?”

“I’m five nine without shoes,” Bev said. “Why?”

Bevin’s sleeveless yellow shirt complemented her stunning hair. It also showed off her slender upper arms—toothpick arms, my mother would call them. No muscle. No meat. Just delicate, decorative appendages.

“You couldn’t have done it,” I said.

“I already told you I didn’t kill Jason Whitley.”

“I know you didn’t, but you couldn’t possibly have done it,” I told her. “Look at you!”

Bev put her drink on the table and looked down at her shirt like she was checking for stains. “So what? Did someone prove murderers never wear pastels?”

“Don’t you see?” Lucinda said. “You’re a tall girl, but your arms are twigs.”

“It doesn’t take much upper body strength to swing at bat at someone’s head,” Bev told her.

“Maybe not, but it takes plenty of upper body strength to lift a corpse, toss it inside a car, then dump it in the woods.”

“I could have dragged him,” she pointed out, playing the devil’s advocate.

“There weren’t any drag marks!” I remembered. “I was there. Nothing was disturbed. Not a thing! Whitley might not have been a very big man, but he wasn’t a featherweight either. You couldn’t have done it.”

“It rained the night before you found Jason Whitley’s body, didn’t it?” Lucinda asked me.

“There was a big storm. Water would have filled in any deep drag marks. There were ordinary puddles on the path. That’s all. No drag marks.”

“Someone could have helped me carry Whitley into the woods,” Bev said.

“Who for instance? Franklin? He didn’t even know about the affair until Haver came to question you. Who else? Me?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly. You’re too short.”

“Exactly. You don’t have a sister, and you’re not close enough to anyone else in whole world to ask for that kind of favor except maybe your mother. She’s about seventy years old, isn’t she?”

“She’ll be sixty-nine in June,” Bev said.

“If almost any woman killed Jason Whitley, she’d need an accomplice,” Lucinda told her. “No, I think it will be easy enough to prove you didn’t do it. Let me take you over to your other lawyer—Harold Baylor. The guy’s a barracuda. You’ll love him.”

“Okay,” Bevin said.

“Wait for me in my car,” Lucinda told her. “I need to talk to Colleen for a minute.”

The lawyer downed half of her screwdriver, then turned her attention to me. “The man in the driveway—the one who called me,” she said. “Is that your editor?”

I nodded.

“He’s not printing any of this business with Bevin in the paper, is he?”

“He told me he wouldn’t print a thing unless she’s arrested,” I said.

“I suppose that’s his big, expensive SUV in your driveway?”

“Someone broke into my house yesterday,” I explained. “He came to help and stayed the night to make sure I was safe. Why? Did I do something wrong?”

“Not really. I wouldn’t want Neil claiming you were having an affair with the guy before he left you.”

“I hardly knew him when Neil walked out. He’s only been at the paper for two months. Believe me, it’s not what you think.”

“Too bad,” Lucinda said with a sly wink.

23

Ken Rhodes arranged for the patio door to be fixed early the next morning. I thanked him and sent him on his way, keeping my fingers crossed that there would be enough credit left on my charge card to cover the damages.

Bevin left with Lucinda Maynard to meet with the criminal lawyer. I would have gone with them, but I wanted to wait for Sara. The boys would stay with my parents until I called them to come home.

My brother dropped Sara off in the early evening. She arrived sunburned, hungry, and thankfully in a halfway decent mood for a change. It had been a long day, and I was too exhausted to deal with more drama.

Sara eyed the makeshift wall in the kitchen and the empty space on the desk in the den with the same weird sense of glee her brother had. She temporarily forgot her empty stomach.

“Just think, Mom, you know something that’s important enough for our house to be broken into. How cool is that?”

“That’s me—cool,” I said.

“Do you think Mr. Whitley’s murderer broke in and robbed us? Grandma told me all about your notes.”

I sighed. It seemed like the whole world knew about the break-in. “Could be. Ken Rhodes thought there might be other information on the laptop that someone wants, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“What kind of information?”

“Financial,” I told her.

“We’re not rich, are we?” she asked.

I laughed.

“Then who would care what—oh, God! Dad!”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t your father, Sara. He may be a lot of things, but I doubt he’d stoop to burglary.”

“I’ll bet he’s got plenty of money, Mom. He lives in that fancy building on the bay, and he has his own business. Maybe he kept records on the computer, the kind that show how much money he has stashed away somewhere. Suppose he’s trying to hide his—what do call it? Money balance? Earnings?”

“Assets?” I guessed.

“Yeah.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” I told her.

I wanted to tell her he had already hidden many of his assets in a variety of bank accounts. I had no idea how much deposed wives are supposed to tell their kids about their miserly, recently AWOL fathers, but I thought it best not to say anything Though I had confidence in Lucinda Maynard’s ability to squeeze blood from a stone, it could take time to uncover the facts about Neil’s finances. Still, I doubted Neil would be dumb enough to leave that kind of information behind on the computer. He was far too sneaky for that.

Sara opened the empty freezer and stuck her head inside to cool off. “You’d think with all his
assets
, he’d get the air conditioner fixed and send over a little grocery money.”

“We can’t buy groceries if we can’t get to the market. Why don’t you go to Grandma’s house and see what she has to eat?”

Sara, my resident vegetarian, made a face. “Her refrigerator’s probably filled with meat. We really need a car, Mom. Besides, I’ll be getting my learner’s permit soon, you know,” she said.

I frowned. I could barely handle day-to-day life as it was, let alone the worry of my child being a brand-new driver.

“We’re all kinda stuck here without wheels,” she told me.

There was nothing more frustrating than living in the suburbs without a car. You couldn’t even run to the store for milk unless you actually ran—like two grueling miles of paved highway just to get to the nearest 7-Eleven.

“Where would I get the money to buy a car? Your father?”

“That’s a good one! Grandma told me she’d lend you the money,” Sara said.

My mother had been hinting about lending me money since the day after I sank the Escort in the bay. Though my parents were far from rich, I knew they could afford it. Even with that, I hated the thought of taking their hard-earned cash.

“I don’t know if I’d ever be able to pay her back. Cars are very expensive, Honey.”

She rolled her eyes. “Find a used car and deal on the price. Everybody buys used cars now.” She paused. “Hey! Mr. Da Silva’s selling his Camry.”

“I don’t know …” I told her, but found myself daring to hope. I thought maybe, if things worked out at the newspaper, I would be able to earn enough to repay my parents. Though my mother never balked when I borrowed her car, it still felt like an imposition. “Mr. Da Silva doesn’t seem like the type who would negotiate.”

“You don’t know until you ask,” Sara said. “Besides, the kids in school said his wife broke a carton of milk in the trunk and it seeped all the way down through the carpet into the spare tire well. There’s your reason for negotiating. You can say the car smells sour.”

I wrinkled my nose. I knew how bad sour milk could smell. Left to bake inside a hot trunk, it would take fumigation to eliminate the odor. On the other hand, ripping out carpeting in a small space like a trunk would be a snap. And removing the spare from the tire well to thoroughly scrub with Lysol would only take a matter of minutes. I doubted much of a smell would linger, and I could live with that—if the price was right.

“You know you want this, Mom. A real car. The kind without rust? A car that actually works!”

The kid was getting to me. I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

“Go for it, Mom. Do it! Seize the day, or the dusk, or whatever it is out there. You know, like you always tell me to do.”

Though she rarely showed it, Sara could charm a snake if she wanted to.

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” I agreed.

Sara flashed a triumphant grin. “Mr. Da Silva usually parks the car at the Little League field and walks home because he only lives a block off Poe Street. Why don’t you go check it out now, Mom?” She reached inside her front pocket. “Here’s my cell phone in case you want to give him call.”

I took the phone. “Don’t get too excited, Sara. Remember, I’m just looking.”

* * *