Margaret’s stomach, but she couldn’t say whether she was more afraid of what he would find or what he wouldn’t.
On the Road
WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK BUZZED at 5 am, Tom reached over and hit the snooze button. He wasn’t a morning person, never had been, and another 15 minutes wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. He’d considered flying and nixed the idea. To get where he was going he’d need a car anyway, so driving made sense.
The trip was over 500 miles, mostly highway. With a little luck, he’d make it before dark and have time to look around before checking into a motel. Over the weekend, he’d studied the road atlas and mapped out a route for hitting Coal Creek first, then Charleston, and, depending on what he came up with, possibly continuing on to Huntington. Then he’d cross over into Ohio, check out the Columbus newspapers, and after that the glass manufacturers in Wheeling.
When the alarm buzzed the second time, he silenced it and climbed out of bed. As much as he disliked mornings, he was anxious to get going. There was something about this case that made him feel good about working again.
It reminded him of the Blakely case. Homer Blakely left the dinner table saying he had to use the bathroom then vanished. The family waited dessert for over an hour thinking he might be a bit constipated. His granddaughter went to check on him and discovered him gone. After a week of searching, Tom found the old guy doing what he’d done as a young man: playing the ponies at Pimlico.
Cases like that had a feel-good resolution, and Tom thought the same could be true about this one. On the up side, he had more information than he’d had back in ’44; on the down side, the age of the case was troubling. It was 24 years older than it was back then.
After a quick shower and a cup of instant coffee, Tom was on the road. He didn’t really care for the instant stuff because it left a bitter taste in his mouth but hadn’t wanted to waste time brewing a pot. He took the back roads across Polk County, stopped once to grab a container of fresh-brewed coffee and a buttered roll, and continued until he hit the interstate. Making a left onto I-75, he headed north.
The first hour flew by—the traffic was light, and he made good time—but once the coffee and roll were gone, the drive began to get monotonous. There were few distractions on the road, stretches without a single billboard, and only a handful of rest stops. Tom snapped on the radio, but this was mountainous country and the reception was terrible. He twisted the dial for a while, hoping to find something—country music, gospel, news, even a weather report would have been welcome—but the only thing he got was static. Eventually he gave up, snapped the radio off, and reached across the seat to pull the notebook from his briefcase. With one eye on the road and the other scanning his notes, he went back to thinking about the case.
He’d spent a lot of time with Margaret and had a good background on the Hobbs family; that was going to be helpful. Even though she’d said going back to Coal Creek could be a waste of time, he had a hunch he’d get lucky. People remembered things and they talked, especially if there was some sort of scandal attached to the story. A father who’d abandoned his family not once but twice was definitely fodder for gossip. His thought was that he’d come across a neighbor or friend who knew something.
As he drove, he began thinking over what he knew about each of the brothers. Oliver was born in 1894, taller than average, and strong. He’d be 74 years old now. Probably too old to still be working, but if he’d stayed with the glass manufacturing company and retired around 1959, it was feasible he was now collecting some kind of retirement benefit. A flicker of hope made Tom smile. Then he remembered how Margaret had described her older brother. He didn’t sound like a stay-in-one-job kind of person. He’d traveled with the family from Barrettsville back to Coal Creek and then immediately left home. Him and Ben Roland both—why?
Ben Roland, a life tragically cut short. Back in 1944 Tom had known only that the family came from a coal mining town, so he’d taken