Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa Read Free Book Online Page A

blouse for my chat with Ken Rhodes at the newspaper office. I tried my best to go unnoticed as I passed Meredith Mancini’s cubicle, but either the young editor had superhuman hearing, or she saw my reflection in her monitor.
    “I need to talk to you before you leave,” she called over her shoulder. She was busy editing one of my stories. I knew she was waiting for the overdue article on the flying lessons.
    I continued to Ken Rhodes’s office and walked in without knocking. He gave me one of those looks, one that made me flush from head to toe.
    I plowed forward, trying to ignore the tingling in my body. “Matthew Oliver left my house an hour ago. I don’t know how to take him,” I said. “He’s a little sad, but not devastated. Does anyone know where he was when Dizzie drowned?”
    Ken motioned to a chair near his desk, and I sat, waiting patiently for him to give me whatever information he had on the Hot Air King. He opened a drawer and fished around for a second before pulling out a sheet of scrap paper. “Matthew Oliver has an alibi for that entire Wednesday morning. He and his crew met for breakfast at 6:00 a.m. at the Bagel Bungalow out on Route 34. They all left around seven thirty, according to the server. Matthew paid the check with a company credit card. He signed the receipt.”
    “Who told you about the alibi?” I asked.
    “Ron Haver.”
    Ken Rhodes and Ron Haver were close friends from way back in their college days. My brother, Dick, was also friends with the two and had gone to school with both men, but he wasn’t privy to any of the information surrounding Dizzie’s death. Haver was a detective and Rhodes was a newspaper man, so crime had become their main connection of late. Dick, a computer geek, was currently out of the loop.
    “Matthew Oliver sprang for breakfast for the entire crew? Why do I find that so hard to believe?” I asked.
    “The Olivers aren’t exactly known far and wide for their generosity, I know, but the fact is there’s no way he could have killed his wife,” Ken told me.
    I took a moment for his statement to register. Why would Matthew Oliver treat his entire crew to breakfast? Dizzie had told me that her tightfisted husband even resented forking over wages for the hard, honest labor his workers performed day in and day out. “He could have been establishing an alibi.”
    Ken got up from his chair and came around the desk. “Could be. Or maybe they were celebrating something and he picked up the tab for the tax write-off. You might want to look into that.”
    I took my notebook from my purse and hunted for a pen. “I’m really curious as to the reason why Dizzie Oliver was displayed at her own wake without her favorite bracelet on her wrist. I’m trying to check that out, too.”
    Ken offered a pained grin. “Yeah, Ron Haver told me how you checked out Dizzie Oliver’s corpse. Classy move, Colleen.”
    I looked up from my notepad. “Thank you.”
    “By the way, your hair’s still curly.”
    “And?”
    “You were supposed to get it straightened, remember?” Ken said. He reached over and twisted a lock around his finger, tugging gently. “I thought we discussed how beneficial it might be to check out Dizzie’s competition.”
    “Well …” Ken’s hand in my hair left me at a loss for words.
    “Chicken.”
    “I’m not a chicken. I just don’t want it ruined. Maybe I’ll just go for a trim or something. Like you said before, it’s only hair. It’ll grow back.”
    “Doesn’t that straight-hair thing take a while? You’d get more time to talk to Trina Cranford and find out just how much animosity there was between the two hairdressers.”
    “I guess, but I don’t have enough money right now to put out and wait until I’m reimbursed,” I told him. “And if my last statement was correct, I’m close to maxing out my credit card.”
    Ken reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. “About how much does it cost?”
    “A few hundred