“How am I doin’?” he asks me.
“You’re a fast learner.” I am upright and slipping on my gloves. “Which trail should we take?”
Four snowmobile trailheads lead from the parking lot. One even continues across the road. The Conwell Snowmobile Club sent its groomer out after the storm, so the snow on the trails will be smooth and hard beneath our shoes. Walking on them will be a piece of cake compared to breaking freshly fallen snow. Sam and I found that out fast. All we had to do on the trails was step aside when we heard a machine coming and give a wave.
Jack doesn’t answer. He stares at the black, woolen leggings I usually wear when I snowshoe or hike.
“Nice legs,” he tells me.
“They go with my feet, long and skinny,” I joke.
He chuckles as he gestures toward the trailhead farthest to right in the parking lot.
“How about that one?”
“Sure.”
Jack bucks forward, a little awkward at first, but then he gets into a rhythm. I’m right beside him. It doesn’t take long before his gloves are off, and he’s unzipped his jacket. He stuffs his cap into a pocket. He’s huffing and puffing a little.
“Phew. You’re right about working up a sweat. Next time, I won’t wear this heavy jacket.” I note he says next time. “Maybe I should get me some leggings like you have. Think they make ’em in my size?”
I giggle thinking of Jack in leggings.
“I bet they do.”
“What’s so funny?”
“I can hear the boys at the Rooster calling you one of those men in tights.”
“Well, I’ll set them straight I’m snowshoeing and not cross-country skiing.” He scoffs. “Men in tights.”
I slap his arm. I can’t stop laughing.
“Maybe they won’t believe you. They’ll think you’ve gone soft on them.”
“Well, they’d better or I’ll put them on the six-month list.” He chuckles. “It seems to me you’re having a lot of fun at my expense.”
“Yup.” He stops walking when I stop. “Hey, look how far we’ve come.”
We’ve reached the old logging road where Adela’s car was found. We are already in Wilmot.
Jack points toward the right.
“That’s where they found her car.”
“My boys and I walked this way a couple of weeks ago. We found a wooden cross near the spot. Turns out Dale put it there for his mother.”
“Yeah, the kid took it pretty hard. A lot of people did. Me included.”
“Were you two close?”
“Knew her all my life,” he says. “I know what you’re gonna ask me next. Did we ever, uh, go out?”
“Yeah, did you?”
“We hooked up a couple of times, once when we were kids, and then later on. We had a lot of fun. Yeah, we slept together. But I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Shame what happened to her.”
“I met up with Bobby Collins this morning. Did you know he’s on the wagon?”
“Hmm, makes sense now that he hasn’t been comin’ into the Rooster,” he says. “How’d it go with him?”
“Oh, fine. He’s pretty insistent he had nothing to do with it. He wants me to find the person who did.”
“That’s what he keeps sayin’.”
“You’re not convinced?”
“I hate to pin the blame on somebody who’s innocent, but Bobby is sure tops on everybody’s list.”
“If that’s true, what did he do with her body?”
Jack smiles.
“Well, detective, that’s for you to find out.”
I nod in the direction from where we came.
“This was good for the first outing, probably almost two miles. Maybe, we should head back.” I giggle. “I wouldn’t want to tucker you out.”
“Silly woman. But, okay, we can take a different trail next time. I have the map memorized in my head.”
Jack and I keep up a lively banter as we step our way back. We talk about the holiday. His sister will cook a bird with all the trimmings. It’ll just be him and her. He could invite a couple of the loners from the Rooster, but Eleanor wouldn’t like the intrusion. Besides, they see them enough times already.
I tell him Ruth wants to do the holiday up big. She doesn’t even want my help. I’m just bringing the wine. I’ll have to make a trip to the city tomorrow morning. “Last year’s Thanksgiving was pretty miserable. Sam was only gone two weeks. There was a lot of crying that day. This should be a much happier time. Besides, we’ve got Sophie.”
“I saw her in the store with your daughter. Ruth sure looks a lot like you did when you first moved to town.”
“Some people say that,” I say. “I didn’t know you were paying attention to me back then.”
“Ha, we all were. You and Sam were newcomers. We natives had to keep a close watch to see if you passed the test.”
“What test?”
“The hilltown test.”
“What’s that?”
“Like if you move to town and want to shut the gate behind you, so nobody else new can come here. That’s a bad mark. Or you think the natives are a bunch of stupid hicks. That’s another. Or you think this is supposed to be some goddamn paradise. You flunk out on that one.”
I nod. I’ve seen and heard it all.
“So, did we pass?”
“I’d say. We didn’t run you out of town, did we?”
“No, you didn’t.”
Probably, at the start it was Sam who won over the natives. They saw how hard he worked for his family, taking any crappy carpentry job that came his way until he could establish himself. We were renting a shit box of house on the other side of town. I helped our cause when I became a reporter. I wrote about the stuff a lot of the natives wanted to read.
We’re back at the Rooster’s parking lot. Jack lowers the tailgate on his pickup, so we have a place to sit while we take off our snowshoes. He keeps looking my way as I unsnap the snowshoes’ laces and clap them together to shake off the snow. Jack copies me.
I jump to the ground and open the back of the Subaru. Jack is beside me, standing awfully close.
“Here, let me have those,” I tell him.
Instead, Jack tosses the shoes in the back over mine. But before I can shut the hatch, he grips my upper arms and pulls me toward him. My mouth drops open. I mean it’s been a while, but I recognize the signs he wants to get close. We kiss, gently, a good first kiss, not too sloppy, though I’m nervous as hell, stop briefly, and after I give him the go-ahead smile, he kisses me again, really kissing me, tongue and all, and I’m kissing him back. His hands slide down my lower back as he brings me closer. I wrap my arms around him. He kisses me again. He means business. This is clearly an invitation for something more.
Congratulations, Isabel, you were looking for trouble, and here you’ve got it. Alleluia, God, and thank you very much.
Jack drops his hands when a car pulls into the lot. I do the same, and when I turn, I see a SUV with New York plates. I step to Jack’s side as casually as I can muster.
A man rolls down the window. A woman in the front seat bends forward to get a better view. They know what we were doing.
“Are you open?” he asks.
Jack shakes his head.
“Sorry, we’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays. We were just checking on the place. Hope you come another time. We always have a band on Fridays.”
The man nods and rolls up his window before he pulls the car onto the main road.
“Ha, that was close.” Jack chuckles. “Makes me feel like a kid getting caught like that. At least, they weren’t local, not that I mind anybody seeing us. But you know what I mean.”
I laugh, too.
“When I was in the backroom of the store this morning, one of the Old Farts said he heard we danced together at the Rooster. Then another one announced he saw you riding your snowmobile toward my house. I asked him if he was following you around town.”
Jack shakes his head
.
“Nosy old bastards. Guess they have nothing better to do.” He chuckles. “Did I hear you call them the Old Farts?”
“Uh-huh, with a capital O and a capital F.”
Jack presses his lips.
“Good one.” He chuckles. “I had a great time with you today, Isabel. Too bad I promised Eleanor I’d take her grocery shopping, uh, for Thanksgiving. She’s already ticked off she couldn’t go earlier. I didn’t dare tell her I was going snowshoeing with you.”
“It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was. We’ll have to do something else fun real soon.”
And then he kisses me again.
What’s in the Box?
Hours later, I’m upstairs in my office. I brought up a bowl of soup, kale, of course, to eat while I go through the contents of the box from the old chief’s house. The dog, Maggie, is at my feet. The kitten wanders over my desk.
I’ve already called Ma to give her a report about the box and my meeting with Bobby. She told me I sounded sympathetic. I admit I am. I can appreciate he’s trying to stay clean and sober, that he’s remorseful for the things he’s done. Ma says, “Maybe he has a reason for that.” So, I keep Bobby on the suspect list but with a question mark beside his name. The same goes for his friend, Marsha.
I didn’t tell Ma about Jack, even after she asked me what I’ve been up to since she left. I was vague. I said I went snowshoeing, which is a foreign concept for Ma, so she didn’t ask if I went alone or with somebody. She probably figured I did it in the backyard. Like I said, most snow turns to rain on an ocean-facing town like where she lived. If it does get a snowstorm, it’s usually a whopper. But no one snowshoes in my old town.
I’ve already seen most of the paperwork in the old chief’s box, mostly police records and news clippings, mainly the stories I wrote when I was the town reporter. Chief Ben Sr. drew his own map and created a very short list of suspects. Like I said, Bobby Collins is first. Number two is a name I don’t recognize: Walter Bartol. Bruce Clark is number three, but there is a line through that one, as if he was eliminated. The last name, a man who used to be one of Adela’s neighbors, has been dead for at least ten years. I knew the guy well. I can’t imagine his motivation. The old chief was fishing on that one.
Who the hell is Walter Bartol? I can’t recall anyone with that name living in Conwell. I find out who he is at the bottom of the pile when I see the paperwork for a restraining order Adela took out against him six months before she disappeared. He wasn’t allowed to come near her, including her home and workplace, which would be her folks’ general store.
Adela writes on the order’s form Walter Bartol was real friendly to her at the store, so she agreed to go out on a date with him. It appeared he expected a lot more from her that night than she wanted to give. She says he tried to rape her, but she fought him off. The trouble continued. He made lewd and rude comments when he saw her at the store. Then he started parking outside her house. Once in the city, he scared her badly when she was shopping with her son, Dale.
I glance at the time on my computer. It’s only seven, and still early enough to call Andrew Snow. I tap the numbers on my phone.
“You find anything?” Andrew asks me.
“I sure did. I was going through the old chief’s paperwork from that time and found something really interesting. It’s a restraining order Adela took out against a Walter Bartol.”
Andrew curses softly. “Walter Bartol. I forgot all about him.”
“Who is he?”
“He drove a beer truck. From what Adela told me, he was making a real pest of himself. I don’t know if they ever went out, but something must’ve happened that scared her bad enough to do that. As I recall, he stopped delivering to the store. His replacement didn’t give me much of an explanation.”
“So, Walter Bartol was a delivery man?”
“Yes, he was,” Andrew whispers. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’ve got more to go through. But I plan to find this Walter Bartol and ask him some questions. There’s an address on this order, but that was twenty-eight years ago. I might have to do a little digging. Course, it’ll be easier with the internet. I’ll just Google his name.”
“You’ll Google?”
“It’s a way to search,” I say. “Do you have any idea how old he was at the time.”
There’s a pause at the other end of the line.
“Let me see. He was middle-aged. I believe he was divorced cause once in a while he complained about an ex-wife. He was tall and with a full head of hair. He was strong from carrying all those cases of beer. My Irma thought he was kind of handsome. He’d been coming to the store for years.”
“Did he hang around Adela when he came in?”
“Uh-huh, the guys in the backroom sure noticed. They were careful not to talk about my family back there, but sometimes I overheard them.”
“That helps. I’ll let you know what I find. By the way, I met Bobby Collins today.”
“I heard,” he says. “The town clerk’s my cousin’s daughter.”
I laugh. I don’t need the internet in Conwell. The local family network is alive and well. So is the Old Farts network in the backroom.
“I forgot. Anyway, Bobby insists he didn’t do it. It looks like he’s trying to clean up his act.”
“That’s what I hear. I still don’t trust the guy.”
I get to work on my computer. Roxanne, the kitten, has jumped in my lap. Maggie is curled near my feet.
“Well, look at what I found,” I tell them.
Two Walter Bartols live in the valley, one the right age, if my math is correct, and miraculously at the same address. I figure the other Walter Bartol must be a junior. I print out the page, which I tape to the wall of crime along with the restraining order. I write Walter Bartol at the top of the suspects’ list and shoot an arrow from deliveryman to his name. Maybe I’m getting somewhere.
My cell phone rings. It’s not Andrew calling me back, and not Ma, although I can’t wait to tell her about the restraining order, but Jack.
“Hey, Jack, what’s going on?”
“I just wanted you to know I had a swell time today.”
Jack would see me blushing a little around the neck if he were telling me this in person. Snap out of it, Isabel. You just went snowshoeing. You only kissed a little.
“I had a swell time, too.”
“I hope you didn’t mind my kissing you like that.”
I giggle. Oh, no, I’m giggling.
“As I recall, Jack, I was kissing you back.”
He makes one of those explosive laughs, like he’s been holding it inside.
“You’re right. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Yes, you will.”
I get up and walk across the hall to my bedroom. I give it a close study before I go to my bureau, where I keep a framed photo of Sam. I took it when we were on vacation, the time we camped at Mount Monadnock in Southern New Hampshire and climbed it twice. He’s got a nice smile as he sits on the mountain’s very top. I hold the photo close to my heart as I carry it into my office and place it on the tall bookcase he built for me. I can keep an eye on him there from now on.
Thanksgiving
Dinner is over. We’ve cleared the table and put the food away. The dishwasher chugs away in the kitchen. We continue to drink wine while our bellies make room for dessert, as my mother would say. I called Ma already, and let the kids take turns talking with her until I brought the phone to the other room to tell her about Walter Bartol and the restraining order.
“Good work, Isabel,” she tells me.
Matt and Alex are here, without girlfriends, plus Gregg’s parents, who drove here from Connecticut. Nice folks, already retired, but busy with traveling and volunteer work. I get along just fine with Anne and Phil. Our politics are similar, on the liberal side, but we avoid talking too much about that topic. They’re just back from China, so they have a lot to share about the trip.<
br />
“Hey, Mom, it was funny seeing you at the Rooster,” Matt says.
I smile at him and Alex, who showed up last night.
“I was glad you two behaved yourselves. I’d hate to see you make one of Jack’s lists.”
The boys laugh. As Jack predicted, it was a busy night, heavy on local guys and kids of drinking age home from college or their new lives. The men outnumbered the women. Bud was King, naturally, although I did make a margarita, straight up and light on the salt, for one of the college girls. The Rooster didn’t serve food, so we sold out of potato chips. Empty chip bags were everywhere when I went to fetch bottles from the tables. But at least Eleanor wasn’t there, so Jack didn’t leave me alone with the horde.
Jack was friendly, but not too, too friendly. We worked side by side filling orders behind the bar, joking, laughing, and taking turns to fetch empties. He walked me to my car when the bar was closing, but there were no good-night kisses because a couple of the snowmobilers were smoking dope in the parking lot before they took off. It was all right by me. It’s kind of early to expect that sort of thing in whatever Jack and I are doing although he did stroke my upper arm.
“Is the Rooster that barroom in town?” Anne, Gregg’s mother, asks me. “You’re not going to work for another newspaper?”
I set down my glass and slide it toward Alex for a refill.
“No, I’m outta the newspaper business. I like tending bar. You should stop by tomorrow night. It’s local color night.”
“What’s that?” Anne asks.
“Oh, it’ll be a mix of natives whooping it up and the newcomers slumming it,” I explain. “The Cowlicks will be playing. They have a solid redneck play list.”
Anne looks at Phil, who gives her a “we’ll see” kind of look. She may be interested in going for an anthropological trip to the Rooster although I seriously doubt Phil, who’s a bit of a stiff, would. His son isn’t a stiff, but he’s a quiet kind of guy who goes along with our family’s zany outbursts. Anne must have had a bit to drink because the Rooster is definitely not their style. She and Phil are more of the quiet cocktail set. Besides, the bar will be super-crowded. The Rooster may exceed its legal limit of people tomorrow night, if there is actually one.
Chasing The Case Page 16