Tag Archives: rural life

Hilltown Postcards

Hilltown Postcards: A Generous Gift

t’s been a while since I wrote a Hilltown Postcard, stories inspired by the many years we lived in Worthington Mass. Here is one about a surprise bequest.

A person I knew who worked in the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds called to say I should check out a will recently filed in Probate Court. According to the source, Marvis “Peg” Rolland, a Worthington resident, had left a great deal of money to the town and hilltown groups.

That was in 1989 when I was the hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. I so enjoyed the beat, covering stories, big and small, for rural towns. Think populations around a thousand, give or take a couple of hundred. For that, I counted on my network of reliable sources like this person, who I will not name. Breaking news with a front page story was absolutely one of the best parts of that job.

Of course, I drove straight to Probate Court. This is what I found out.

Peg Rolland, who had died Aug. 13 at age 71, did indeed leave a huge amount of money — $1.7 million — to the town, hilltown organizations and people close to her.

She designated $627,500 and the brick ranch home aka Brickhaven at Four Corners would go to the town. Of that sum, $100,000 was for planting maple trees along town roads; $25,000 for North Cemetery; $100,000 for the Worthington Historical Society; $100,000 for the Fire Department; and $100,000 for the Council on Aging.

Residents had to formally accept the conditions of the will at a Special Town Meeting, which they did. The Art and Peg Rolland Highway Fund was eventually created to buy equipment and machinery. A scholarship in their name was established for Worthington students.

Another $575,000 would go to hilltown groups, including the Worthington Health Association, Worthington Congregational Church and Huntington Lions Club.

Peg also left $515,00 to relatives and friends.

She and her husband, Arthur, who died a few months before her, did not have children. That’s a photo to the right of Peg and Arthur from the Worthington Historical Society’s Archives.

I didn’t know Peg, but those who did told me she lived a fugal and quiet life. She never spoke about her business affairs or the intentions in the will she had drawn up five years earlier.

For many years, she worked for Snyder’s Express, the transportation company owned by her father Henry Snyder. Henry was a genuine hilltown character, serving as a Worthington selectman for over 35 years and a shrewd business man. I’ve heard the stories. He certainly would make a great Hilltown Postcard.

Peg was also the office manager for Albert Farms, owned by Ben Albert, another mover and shaker in Worthington. Check out this Substack about his farm: A Potato Farm Goes Barren

She also served the town as tax collector for 20 years and was a member of local groups.

Of course, after the news broke, people had a lot to say about Peg’s generosity. Julia Sharon, who was on the Board of Selectmen when the news broke, said she fielded many phone calls about it, including from people as far away as the Midwest. Locally, some townspeople wondered if it meant they wouldn’t have to pay property taxes or the money could be used to fix up Route 143 in town. Sorry, no.

NOTE: The Hilltowns not only inspired me as a reporter and columnist, but as a novelist. Most of my books are set in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. Here’s a link.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Round Up the Unusual Suspects

Naturally, a mystery has to have suspects. And given Finding the Source is Isabel Long’s eighth case, I wanted to give her a challenge.

For the first time, the case involves an outright murder. Others have been so-called accidental deaths, a supposed failed suicide attempt, and missing people, including an abducted baby. And, yes, she solved each one. So, Isabel has a streak going.

Her eighth case starts when she is approached on a city street by a homeless man, Tom McKenzie, who says his mother was murdered in a small town forty-three years ago and her case was never solved. His mother, Abby McKenzie, was a well-liked book seller who had a shop. She was found strangled and beaten in her home by Tom when he was 12.

So, here are the obstacles I threw in Isabel’s way. First, forty-three years is a long time ago. Isabel wasn’t living in the hilltowns then. Then she finds many of the people connected to the case, including suspects the police questioned, have been long dead.

But that doesn’t deter Isabel, who uses the skills she learned as a nosy reporter covering small towns to find people aka sources who were connected to Abby and even her case. From those conversations, Isabel develops a list of suspects. And I thoroughly enjoyed creating each one.

Was her murder linked to the valuable books she sold on the side to collectors? Then Rudolph Fisher is definitely on the list of suspects. Too bad he’s dead, but his twin brother Randolph, also a collector, is worth interviewing.

Or was it something more personal? One source, a waitress who was a friend, claims a town official stalked Abby after she rejected him. He’s dead.

Fred Perry was allegedly the last person to see Isabel after he and his wife attended a book reading that night. He brought his wife home first since she allegedly wasn’t feeling well. Yes, they’re both dead.

What about the man who was working on Abby’s house and was known for cheating on his wife? He now has dementia. Hmm, what about the wife?

Abby’s ex-husband is alive but unwell. He has an alibi, but his second wife, jealous of Abby, doesn’t. Interesting that she wasn’t interviewed by the police after the crime happened.

Tom lends Isabel a notebook he created about his mother’s murder, which includes a page called Suspects. Here’s an excerpt from the scene in which she takes Tom out for breakfast.

I am especially interested in the page: MY SUSPECTS. So, I return to that one. Tom wrote his father’s name, but that one is crossed out. The other two names are George Perry and Rudolph Fischer.

“What made you change your mind about your father?” I ask.

“I was pissed at him. That’s why. I was staying at his house that night anyways. We came back real late from going to Boston to see the Red Sox.”

Depending on when they returned from Boston, his father could have snuck out after Tom went to bed. Having Tom sleeping over could be an alibi. Stephen McKenzie’s name is uncrossed in my mind.

“Okay. What can you tell me about George Perry and Rudolph Fischer?”

“George lived in our town. He and his wife Elizabeth went out with Mom that night. They went to dinner and an author reading. I heard he took his wife home first, and then he dropped off my mother.”

“And you suspect him, why?”

“’Cause he was one of the last to see her. Anyway, he’s dead. So’s his wife.”

Ugh, this case has too many dead people.

“And Rudolph Fischer?”

“He was a book collector in New York City, but I think he had a summer home somewhere around here. Kind of a jerk, but Mom worked with him a lot. He only bought rare books worth a lot of money. Mom had a knack for finding them. I remember her telling me she had a first edition of The Great Gatsby with the original dust jacket. She could tell because there was a typo on it that said, ‘jay Gatsby.’ The J wasn’t capitalized. And it was signed.” He shakes his head. “Don’t ask me how I remember that, but I do. It came in a box of books she bought at a rummage sale earlier that month. She didn’t know it was in there until she brought it home. Mom told me the book was worth a lot of money. She called Rudolph Fischer. She knew he’d be interested. Mom didn’t keep those books in her store. She had them in that bookcase in her office at home. The one with the broken glass.”

You can solve the case along with Isabel by reading Finding the Source in Kindle or paperback. Thank you if you do. And if you enjoy it, please leave a rating or review on Amazon.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Next Victim: Abby McKenzie in Finding the Source

When I began writing Finding the Source, the eighth book in my mystery series, the only thing I knew for certain is that Isabel Long would be randomly approached by a homeless man who tells her his mother was murdered a long time ago and the case was never solved. Okay. That’s a start.

In the previous seven books, the victims have included a woman who walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again — Isabel’s first case. Others have been the poetry-writing half-brother of two drug dealers, an SOB of a guy who supposedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire, the owner/editor of a small town newspaper etc.

But the mother of a homeless man?

My brain got to work.

I wanted this case to be very cold. Forty-three years was what I decided, just a random number really. Tom McKenzie was just a kid, only 12, when he came home to find his mother dead. So, he is now 55 and still struggling with this tragedy.

Isabel didn’t know Tom’s mother — I chose the name Abigail “Abby” McKenzie. She wasn’t even living in the hilltowns when the woman was killed. So, Isabel has to use the skills she acquired as a journalist to interview those who knew Abby well. And that’s how readers get to know her as well.

In an interview, Tom showed Isabel two photos of his mother. This is what Isabel observes. Abby is a thin woman, blonde, with an attractive face I’ve seen in classic paintings. In the second, she stands on a snowy sidewalk beside Tom, long before circumstances took its toll on his life and looks. His mother is a decade older but still an attractive woman. A holiday corsage of bells and holly is pinned to her plaid winter coat. Both are dressed for the cold. They smile in that one, too.

Tom told her: “She was a great mother. She really loved me.”

Her sister, Lucinda said she “was the life of the party.” Abby went to college but had to drop out after their father died and her mother needed help with the family’s little store, Parker’s, in Dillard’s small downtown. It was the kind of store where you could get penny candy, greeting cards, school and art supplies, and magazines. It had a soda fountain where people sat on stools and ate ice cream or drank milk shakes. Kids would walk there because it was close enough to the elementary school.

Later, Abby bought the store from her mother and turned it into a secondhand book store, Parker’s Book Emporium. Here’s more from Lucinda.

“Books were her thing. She was a big reader as a kid and always asked for books as gifts. When she had her store, she searched for books where people didn’t see their true value. I went with her a few times.” Lucinda smiles while she reminisces. “Abby would hunt yard sales for books. People would sell her books they found in their attics or when they were cleaning out a house after somebody died. Abby knew their value. She so enjoyed finding rare first editions. My sister was clever at keeping her excitement in check though. She didn’t want to tip off the sellers. My sister would have been a great poker player. She tried to be fair, but it was strictly business for her.”

Lucinda talks about her sister and the finds she made like the signed first edition hard cover of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. All I have at home is the dog-eared paperback from my college years. I am fascinated a bookstore like that would exist in a town like Dillard. Maybe it was different when the train, which now whizzes through with freight cars, actually had passengers and stopped there.

(By the way, I used my experiences book hunting for this story although, alas, not for a signed first edition of Catcher in the Rye.)

Abby made her serious money selling to collectors, including one who is a chief suspect. Unfortunately, Rudolph Fischer died a few years ago. Ah, but he does have a twin brother, Randolph, also an avid collector. Both are rich as dirt.

As for love interests, Abby had one marriage with Stephen McKenzie, who moved to Dillard when he bought the funeral store in town. Tom was the result of that marriage. Stephen was just too serious for Abby, not surprising given his line of business, but she came to regret it. Actually, they both did, but Stephen had found another wife rather soon. They had two kids. Tom said his stepmother resented his intrusion into their lives.

Is the second wife a suspect? You bet she is.

Here’s the link to buy Finding the Source in Kindle or paperback. Thank you if you do, and please, if you enjoy it, leave a rating.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Connecting One Book to the Others

I love many of my characters, including the so-called bad ones, too much to have them appear in only one book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series.

There are, of course, those close to Isabel Long, the series’ protagonist, like her 93-year-old mother, Maria, her advisor and confidante, and her family. Then there is her love interest Jack, owner of the Rooster, where Isabel works part-time as a bartender. 

They could be a reliable source, say, the Old Farts, those gossipy men who meet in the backroom of the general store and know everybody’s business in town — or at least they think they do. Actually, one of them is directly involved in a case.

Then there are those characters who have a certain role in one book but that changes in subsequent books. Take Annette Waters, one tough local who runs a junkyard and garage. In Redneck’s Revenge, she asks Isabel to investigate the death of her SOB of a father, who was supposedly too drunk to get out of his burning house. (She pays Isabel with free mechanical service for life.)  Annette, who Isabel secretly calls the Tough Cookie, becomes a confidante and an unlikely friend. She is also a great source of amusement via her band the Junkyard Dogs that play frequently at the Rooster. 

Then there are the Beaumont brothers, feral drug dealers who were once suspects. One of them hires Isabel to investigate a case. The other has saves Isabel from dangerous situations.

Lin Pierce, who hired Isabel for his P.I. firm, pays her to investigate a kidnapping in Following the Lead after he closes his business.

Cyrus Nilsson, a noted poet, is a suspect in the third book, Checking the Traps. (Snarky Isabel gave him the nickname Big Shot Poet.) In the seventh, Missing the Deadline, he pays her to probe the shooting of his first literary agent.

So, now I have just published Finding the Source, no. eight. It begins when Isabel and her mother have been invited to a luncheon at Luella’s a swanky restaurant, likely the only one, in the town of Mayfield. Their host is Anna Robbins, the subject of the seventh case in Following the Lead. When she was a baby, she was stolen from her carriage in her family’s front yard after her brother, Lin, was lured away. (The Bald Old Fart is her father.) Anyway, a grateful and wealthy Anna wants to personally thank Isabel.

And because Anna has lured Isabel to Mayfield, a city she rarely visits, it sets her next case in motion when she and her mother have a chance encounter with a homeless man, who has a crime worth solving — he was 12 when he discovered his mother’s body and the murder was never solved. But how could a homeless man hire Isabel?

Here’s a bit from that scene at Luella’s.

“So, Isabel, I imagine you are wondering why I invited you to lunch,” Anna says. “Lin told me what a curious person you are, how that makes you a great private investigator.”

I feel myself smile.

“Yes, I inherited the curiosity gene from my mother,” I say. “But you’re correct. Is there something more I can do for you?”

Anna shakes her head.

“I wanted to give you a gift,” she says, as she reaches inside her Luis Vuitton purse on the seat beside her. “I know how much Lin paid you. I don’t believe it was enough, so I wanted to make my own contribution.” She holds an envelope for me to take, which I do. “Please accept this gift. Go ahead. Open it.”

I lift the envelope’s flap and peek inside. I read the amount on the check twice. Wow, it is five times the amount Lin paid me, and he was very generous.

“Uh, Anna, this is too much.”

“No, it isn’t.” She puts those distinctive eyes on me. “I can easily afford it. I am a very wealthy woman, thanks to family money. My other family.”

“I appreciate the offer….”

“This is not an offer, but a gift I want you to have,” she says. “Lin told me you are a person of high moral standards. We don’t have enough people like that these days. Spend the money anyway you see fit. Go on a trip. Buy something. Or perhaps, help somebody else.” She smiles. “Please.”

I nod. 

“Thank you. I will put the money to good use.”

“I bet you will,” Anna says.

And I bet you can guess what Isabel will do with some of that money. 

Here’s the link to Finding the Source for Kindle and paperback. And if you enjoy it, please leave a rating or even a review on Amazon. Thank you if you do.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Creating the Cover for Finding the Source

The first thing a person notices about a book is its cover. So, it’s my hope the ones created for the books I write fit the story and get readers’ attention.

I so enjoyed the lively and bright covers created by my publisher Bloodhound Books for the first three books in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. They inspired me to be a bit more daring while developing the one for Finding the Source, the eighth book.

As a hybrid author, I self-published Finding the Source. And luckily for me, I have an artist son, Ezra Livingston, who has the skills to create great covers. Perhaps you saw what he created for my books, The Swanson Shuffle and The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine.

When it came to the cover for Finding the Source, I was inspired by an important clue in this latest mystery — a signed, first edition of The Great Gatsby.

Let me back up a little and tell you about Finding the Source. Isabel Long’s next cold case begins when she is randomly approached on a city street by a homeless man, Tom McKenzie, who tells her about the unsolved murder of his mother. It was 43 years ago when he found his mother’s lifeless body. He was only 12 at the time.

Abby McKenzie owned a secondhand bookstore, Parker’s Book Emporium, in the hilltown of Dillard. She also sold the most valuable books to collectors, including one who was a suspect in her murder. 

Here’s what Abby’s sister, Lucinda Greenwood, tells Isabel during an interview.

“Books were her thing. She was a big reader as a kid and always asked for books as gifts. When she had her store, she searched for books where people didn’t see their true value. I went with her a few times.” Lucinda smiles while she reminisces. “Abby would hunt yard sales for books. People would sell her books they found in their attics or when they were cleaning out a house after somebody died. Abby knew their value. She so enjoyed finding rare first editions. My sister was clever at keeping her excitement in check though. She didn’t want to tip off the sellers. My sister would have been a great poker player. She tried to be fair, but it was strictly business for her.”

One of Abby’s prized finds is that signed, first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Why did I choose this novel? This was another case an idea that popped inside my head. Yes, I read Fitzgerald’s novel oh so many years ago. And then it turns out this is the book’s 100th anniversary.

I suggested to Ezra that I wanted the cover to hint at the Art Deco-styled one for The Great Gatsby and pay homage to it. Called “Celestial Eyes,” the original cover by Francis Cugat has a female face with distinctive features suspended on a deep blue background. At the bottom is a neon-lit city scene. There it is above.

So, we went with a similar blue background but didn’t use the same font or layout for the wording. There wouldn’t be a woman’s face. For the cover’s bottom, I walked to the downtown of the village where I live and used my phone to shoot two blocks of stores. Those scenes would make sense since Abby’s store was located in a small town’s downtown.

Then Ezra worked his magic on the cover, adding small stars to the blue.

I feel the cover he created is eye-catching and tells its own story. Thanks, Ez.

Interested in reading Finding the Source? Here’s the link to buy it in paperback and Kindle. Thank you if you do.

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