“Okay, get me something for tomorrow.”
Those days I used a company-issued laptop, which sounds fancier than it was. The screen showed seven lines, and all I could do with it was write and send a story over the telephone line when I plugged it into the socket. It was a couple of years before I got an actual computer. I bought it myself. It had DOS, and that was it. I only knew two people then who had email, imagine that.
The editor didn’t change a word.
I kept with the story through the week, but the trail was dry from the beginning. A few of the locals said they saw her walking home after the store closed. One guy said he stopped to offer her a ride home as a joke, but she laughed him off. She wore a blue print dress and a black cardigan sweater. She had sensible shoes. None of them were found in her house when her family looked. But her suitcases and clothing were still there, as was her purse on the kitchen counter.
That week, people here and in the neighboring towns drove everywhere looking for Adela’s car or any sign of her. By the time the cops gave in to pressure and called the local search-and-rescue team, it was too late to use the dogs outside her house because the scene had been contaminated. The team leader, a guy named Red, told me if the cops had called right away, the dogs could have told them exactly where she had gone when she left her house. If everybody hadn’t walked and parked all over the damn place, the team could have seen if there had been more than one set of tires in the driveway or on the roadside. It didn’t help that it rained one of the days.
“But they never do,” Red told me. “We could’ve helped find that gal.”
Irma Snow, Adela’s mother, sat by the phone, waiting in case she called. All would be forgiven, I suppose, please come home. After all, Adela did run off on her eighteenth birthday to elope with her boyfriend, John Albright. Both families talked them out of it when they got back and had the marriage annulled.
I even heard a couple of people speculate Adela might have gotten kidnapped, which I felt was rather far-fetched. It’s not like the Snows had big bucks. But I suppose if somebody had called with a ransom request, her parents would’ve been ready.
Adela’s son, Dale, who folks said was really broken up, didn’t want to leave the house, but ended up living with his grandparents. He was too young to be on his own. The story was that he blamed himself for not being home that night. He last saw his mother at the store. Word was she kissed him and told him to call her in the morning before he left for school. He did as he was told, but she never answered.
I wrote a profile of Adela, which we ran with photos her parents entrusted with me. Her mother was too upset, but Andrew, a true New England stoic, talked about her being in 4-H, how she was so good with the customers. The Sunday before Christmas she arranged for one of the regulars, usually Jack Smith from the Rooster, to play Santa. She handed out candy then and at other holidays like Easter and Halloween.
I kept after the state cops for updates until they got so irritated I was told by the sergeant at the Vincent barracks, “If there’s something new, miss, we know how to reach you.”
Even my editor got tired of the story until two months later, when during shotgun season, deer hunters found Adela’s car on that old logging road deep in Wilmot. Andrew Snow insisted the cops call in the search dogs again, but the scent was long gone. The dogs didn’t find anything decomposing in the woods, which brought hope to some.
But the discovery of Adela’s car in such a remote spot was a really bad sign. The state cops had nothing new to say, except they would have the car towed to test for prints. Later, they reported they found prints from Adela and her son, plus some that were not identifiable. Eventually, they released the car to Andrew, who had it towed to a junkyard and crushed. He couldn’t bear to look at it.
I hated going inside the store those days. It was so damn quiet like it was a funeral home, and it kind of was because her family was taking it so hard. My kids were young then, and I cringed when they ran happily through the aisles. No one talked about Adela in front of her parents, who got their daughter-in-law, Jamie’s wife then, to work part-time at the register. Irma Snow handled it the rest of the time, but I could tell she didn’t have it in her. It was about the time she started looking unwell, and months later, we heard about the cancer. She lasted two years, her death accelerated likely by the disappearance of their daughter.
One day, weeks after the car was found, almost Christmas, Andrew Snow took me aside in the store.
“Have you heard anything?” he asked
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I wish I did.”
I flip through the papers. I did an update months later, which really only said the police and everyone else in town didn’t know what happened to Adela Collins. I wrote one on the year anniversary, and seven years later, when she was officially declared dead. I assigned a reporter to write the story of the memorial service. I was an editor then.
I read the police reports and clippings from other papers. The Boston paper summed up the story in three graphs. The reporter called Conwell a quaint hamlet, whatever that is.
Ma switches channels on the TV in the living room. I forgot for a moment she’s there. I check the clock on the stove. It’s only eleven. The night is still young for my mother.
I sit back and recall what it was like in Conwell then. Wherever I went, people wanted to talk about Adela’s disappearance, whether it was at a board of selectmen’s meeting or a kids’ soccer game. They mentioned her ex-husband, Bobby, the drunk, as a possibility. Maybe he and Adela had an argument. The state cops did interview him, but he was excused because he supposedly had an alibi.
Or maybe someone broke into her house like those punk kids who hit homes during the day when people were away working in the city.
One woman, who was a supposed friend, said Adela was depressed. If so, she hid it well.
I didn’t print any of the speculations.
Naturally, people were pissed the cops weren’t doing more. They put up signs all over the hilltowns and in the closest cities. The Snow family pledged a reward. Of course, the kooks called. One woman who claimed to be a psychic said Adela’s body was buried somewhere on Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in the Berkshires. Another, a man this time, claimed she drove to New Mexico and jumped off a bridge there.
Then people started getting really pissed it was taking so long to find out anything about Adela.
“Shit,” I say, slapping the table.
“You okay in there?” my mother calls.
“Yeah, yeah, Ma, I just remembered something.”
“Is it something good?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, and then I rush upstairs to my office.
I push open the folding doors to my closet, where I have stacks of boxes instead of clothes. I eye the writing on the outside of each one and smile. The box I want is on the bottom. It contains the notebooks from my early reporting days, when I was a correspondent and worked from home. I was told I should throw them out after I’m done with a story, so no one can legally request them in case there was a libel suit, but that’s never been a problem with me. I didn’t cover many stories that involved lawyers.
Besides, my handwriting is so hard to read. I mean, I’m scribbling as fast as someone speaks, often without looking at my notebook, so the shelf life for readability is pretty limited. I used to have perfect cursive, thanks to the public school teachers who taught me the Palmer Method, but as I often told my staff, journalism ruined my handwriting.
The box is filled with notebooks, including two legal pads. I had a system. If I was doing a person-to-person interview, I used a reporter’s notebook. If I did a phone interview, I wrote on a legal pad. I also jotted down my observations. They were only leads and not print-worthy, totally off the record. I grab the legal pads and shove the rest of the notebooks back in the box. Someday I may have a bonfire in the backyard but not yet.
I take a chair in the living room, where the light is better for reading.
“What do you have there?” Ma asks when I am back downstairs.
Ma watches the news. The kitten is already a fixture on her lap.
“Old notes. I hope I can find some clues in here.”
“Good luck with that.”
At least, I can read what I wrote. In the days, weeks, and months after Adela went missing, I kept these notes, dated even, and I congratulate myself for doing that much. I flip to the last page on the second notebook. It’s only filled halfway. My last notation is dated seven years after Adela disappeared. Her father and brothers held a memorial service now that she could be declared officially dead. Everything was done to try and find her, or so the cops said. At least the service brought some degree of closure.
The memorial was held at the Conwell Congregational Church, where the pastor, who was new in town, tried hard to make it pleasant for the family. Irma, her mother, was long dead. Adela’s father, Andrew, had aged. His hair was white, and he didn’t smile as much as he did before all of this started. Dale, who had just turned 17, stood beside his grandfather with his head down. Adela’s brother, his wife, and ex-wife, plus their kids were there. So was half the town.
Afterward, a reception was held across the street at Town Hall. I came as a resident of Conwell and not as a member of the press. I couldn’t bring myself to cover the event. I must have written these notes when I got home because they’re rather extensive. I have a list of who attended. Bobby Collins is at the bottom. I heard he flew in from Vegas for the service, which gives him points in my book.
I shake my head. I need to start at the beginning, but I’m too tired. I tell Ma I’m going to bed.
“Don’t stay up too late,” I joke.
“Don’t worry. I will,” she says.
Who Says What
I’m up early drinking coffee, my first today. The kitten’s fed. Ma’s still asleep. I have two legal pads in front of me on the kitchen table.
I’ve already gone through half of the first pad. Most of the conversations I recorded first are of disbelief that something like this could happen to Adela and in our town, as if being such a rural place should make it immune to big city crime. I note old-timers claim no one has ever been murdered in Conwell although there have been bad accidents when someone got killed, including a few drunks, and someone said a guy died from a gunshot during hunting season that may or may not have been intentional, but nothing was ever proven. There have been a number of suicides in the usual manner, a gun to the head, pills, or a running car in a closed garage. Here’s a tip about obits. If it says, “died suddenly,” and there isn’t a request to send donations to a heart fund or any other place like that in the obit, you know the recently deceased offed himself.
People do leave town in a hurry, but it was expected of them. They likely owed money, got into some trouble, or ran off with somebody else’s wife or husband.
I don’t mark up the pages. I am in a reading mode. I want to take it all in first, the mood and suspicions townspeople had. I am amused by my own interest. Morbid might be a good word. Obsessed would be another.
As was my habit then, there’s only writing on the front page and thankfully in pen. Here’s a sample.
MARY ALLEN [NEIGHBOR]: I heard Adela’s car leave her driveway when I was going to bed. What time? It couldn’t have been too late. Maybe ten or earlier. Our houses are really close together, so the headlights on Adela’s car flashed across my windows. The car was moving too fast for me to catch even a bad look. Besides the leaves were still on the trees, so it blocked my view of the road. But I saw enough. I thought it was odd at the time. Adela never drove that fast. I figured I would ask her in the morning what happened. Maybe someone was real sick, like her parents or the boy, and she was going to the hospital. No, I didn’t see another car or pickup. I did tell the cops about it by the way.
VIRGINIA WOODSON: I was leaving the store when I saw Adela and her ex, you know Bobby Collins, arguing outside the store. It was a week before she was gone. It sounded like they were fighting about money because she said, ‘you never gave me anything for Dale, so don’t come around thinking you’re gonna get anything from me cause you’re broke.’ He grabbed her wrist, but she yanked it away and went back inside. Her head was down when she passed me. I could tell she was embarrassed. Bobby Collins sure looked pissed before he drove off in that beat-up pickup he had. He’s a drunk you know.
MY ENTRY WITH A STAR: Cops say Bobby had an alibi that night. He was with Marsha Dunlop.
I know the woman. My mother would call her a Floozy. I would say she was a good-time gal although if you saw her now, fat with raggedy, gray hair and missing teeth, you wouldn’t think so.
On the third sheet, I drew a map of the village where the store and Adela’s house was located. Nothing has changed since. The lots are too small there to build any new homes. I even worked by scale on the road and neighboring houses.
I drew a similar map after they found her car. I went to the spot, hiking in, because the car I had then was too low to the ground to risk it bottoming out. Plus, as I remember, I doubted there would be a wide enough spot to turn around, even a three-point turn, and I sure as hell didn’t want to back my car two miles, which was the distance to the road.
I knew exactly where to go thanks to a couple of the volunteer firefighters who joined the cops that day. As a reporter, I found out fast the cops are a tightlipped bunch, but the firefighters tend to be a friendly group that loves to chat. I got more from them. I couldn’t use any of it on the record, but it helped me head in the right direction.
It had snowed a few days before I hiked that logging road, so I saw the footprints of other people who also made this trek. Mostly, they were made from work boots. Maybe they were from hunters, and I was glad I wore an orange vest and cap I found in the house. Even so, I was taking a chance being out in the woods since it was still shotgun season. Or maybe they were just people being nosy like me.
Of course, the car was long gone, towed to the state police barracks in Vincent to check for fingerprints and whatever they could find. The boot prints took me right to the spot. I walked a bit around the area. I was told by my chatty firefighter friends the road led to one of the branches of the Brookfield River. The Brookfield is one of those rocky New England rivers. If it hadn’t been for shotgun season, I wonder how long it would’ve taken for someone to find Adela’s car.
I see my notation: Did the cops walk to the river?
I didn’t that day. I hadn’t told anyone what I was doing, not even Sam. I probably would’ve been all right, but I had an uneasy feeling. I mean a missing woman’s car ended up here.
The next weekend, on a Sunday, when hunting is not allowed, I talked Sam into going with me. We walked to the river’s edge a couple of miles more, passing one of the snowmobile trails that run through woods, useless without a lot more snow on the ground.
Sam kept waiting for me to give up.
“There’s nothing here, Isabel,” he said.
But Sam was a good sport as I searched among the rocks for any signs and took photos of the scene. I didn’t turn the photos in to the Star because I was on my own time. The paper did run a few I shot like the one of the crowd gathered on the side of the road, hoping for news.
Another photo showed Andrew Snow walking with the local chief. He had been called about the car. Andrew’s head was down. I hated to take the shot, and I got some grief for it from the locals, but I was hoping it would stir someone’s guilty conscience. Andrew told me later he was okay about it. I still have all the photos I took. I found them in an envelope at the bottom of the box after I carried it downstairs to the kitchen table this morning.
I surprise myself that I held onto all of this stuff. I go through phases where I toss stuff out, purges really, especially old notebooks since I can barely read what I wrote anyway. I can remember leaving a notebook at home and calling Sam from the newsroom, so he could read a section out loud, and he’d tell me, “Sorry, Isabel, I can’t m
ake heads or tails of any of this.” Frankly, I had a hard time, too, if I waited too long to read my notes. I’ve already taken a peek at the reporter notebooks. That’s true about them. But I was more careful about writing on the legal pads, thank God.
On one page of the pad, I created a family tree of Adela’s kin. At the bottom I wrote: First husband, John Albright, moved to Florida, so he’s out of the picture.
Another page has a list of everyone who claimed they saw her the day before she was reported missing. Most said it was just another ordinary day in Conwell. Adela was as friendly as usual. Nothing seemed amiss. I actually shopped at the store earlier that day. Adela asked about the kids. She liked the story I wrote about one of the old-timers who still logged with horses. He gave the photographer and me a ride through the woods.
But then I find this notation I marked with stars. It’s on a page with the title: SUSPICIONS. It only had two listed.
LEE KELLEHER: I stopped at a bar in the city. I was meeting up with some people because it was a co-worker’s birthday. Adela was sitting in a booth. She had a half-finished cocktail in front of her. I was as surprised to see Adela, as she was to see me. She looked like she was waiting for someone. It was a Tuesday, which seemed an unusual day to be out drinking rather far from home. I kidded her about meeting a man. Adela told me she went shopping and decided to relax a bit. I didn’t believe her. It was maybe a month before she disappeared.
ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL: A man tells me to check the building permits and board of health records for the cellar holes and septic systems issued that year. They’d be good places to stash a body. His voice was low and gruff, so I couldn’t recognize him. From the background noise, he was calling from a payphone.
The payphones at the store and near Town Hall are long gone now that cell phones mostly work up here. But no one had them when Adela went missing.
Ma’s bedroom door opens. She’s already dressed as she makes her way to the bathroom. I have the coffee machine she brought from her house ready for her. I can’t stand the stuff it makes, but she does. My coffee is too strong for her. Hers is too weak for me.
Chasing The Case Page 4