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

reporter at a large daily newspaper at some point in his life, but he seemed too intense for our quiet suburban town.
    I wondered if Meredith had been right after all with her hit-man reference.

8
    Speculation on the Whitley murder ran amok at the Town Crier offices. Beat reporters, desperate for a story, haunted the county prosecutor’s office and were positive Jennifer Whitley had killed her husband.
    “I don’t think so, unless she hit him in the head with a frying pan when he complained about dinner,” I told Margaret Allen, the seasoned reporter assigned to cover Tranquil Harbor, Cliffwood Beach, and nearby Keyport.
    Margaret set me straight. “The police found a baseball bat in the dumpster near the concession stand down at the field when they were looking for Whitley’s personal effects. His briefcase is still missing. So are his car keys. There was blood on the bat and a few strands of light brown hair. How much do you want to bet they match up to Whitley?”
    “Death by Louisville Slugger. How dramatic,” I said, wondering why no one had bothered to tell me about the murder weapon.
    “A nice, well-balanced metal bat. The kind the kids use,” she told me.
    I knew that would narrow down Ron Haver’s list of suspects.
    I roamed the newsroom and jumped from department to department to conduct an impromptu poll. Paying and Receiving, not the most imaginative of thinkers, thought Whitley’s murder was a random act of violence. Armchair detectives in the guise of copy editors were convinced a spurned lover did Tranquil Harbor’s Casanova in. Willy Rojas, along with Calypso Trent in advertising, agreed with the beat reporters: it had to be Jennifer Whitley. Meredith Mancini thought Whitley’s sparkling personality drove a Harbor Regional faculty member to homicide.
    Mark Doran, the sports editor in the cubicle next to Meredith’s, felt compelled to add his two cents worth. “Maybe Jennifer Whitley did it for the insurance money.”
    “What insurance money?” I asked. “Harbor teachers don’t have much in the way of life insurance. I hear it’s something like a year and a half of their first year’s salary. Do you know how low a first-year salary is for a teacher in our school district?”
    “She probably had a separate plan that insured the guy to the gills,” he said.
    “And hit him in the head with a bat and left him in the woods to collect on it?” I asked.
    “She didn’t kill him there,” Doran said. “That guy was dumped.”
    “Jennifer Whitley isn’t big enough to carry a body half a mile into the woods.”
    “Then she had an accomplice. Maybe her boyfriend helped her.”
    “What boyfriend?” I asked.
    Willy Rojas joined in. “Think about it, Colleen. Her marriage was miserable, she wore a lavender suit to her murdered husband’s memorial service, and she’s more composed than any wife has a right to be under the circumstances. If your husband suddenly turned up dead, wouldn’t it rattle you?”
    “If I got to speak at Neil’s memorial service, I’d be turning cartwheels across the floor,” I said.
    Ken Rhodes came up the aisle with a coffee mug in his hand. “Move along, people. We have a paper to publish.”
    I followed Rhodes back to his office and took my usual chair. “Did you know about the baseball bat?”
    “I did,” he said.
    “And you didn’t even think to tell me about it?”
    He put the mug aside. “We just found out this morning. I’m waiting for the test results on the hair and blood.”
    “How did Margaret Allen find out?” I asked.
    “She’s a beat reporter. They have their sources.”
    I thought Rhodes might have considered the information important enough to pass on to me. “You could have called me. If you don’t share leads with me, I can’t possibly do my job. The entire newsroom knows about the bat. I’m writing the column, yet nobody thought to tell me.”
    “You’re right,” he conceded. “But we only found out about this a short