Isn't She a Beauty?
When Samantha Parson graduated college, she accepted a job offer in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, roughly forty-five miles north of her Puritan Falls home. Thankfully, the job was not so far that she would have to find her own apartment. Living at home would save her quite a bit of money, but it would still be difficult adding the expense of buying and owning an automobile to her student loan payments.
Samantha realized that purchasing a new car was out of the question on her budget, so she began searching the classified ads for a pre-owned vehicle. It was while she and her father were returning from a Honda dealership in Copperwell that she saw a Mustang, with a large FOR SALE sign on its windshield, parked on someone's front lawn.
"Stop, Dad," she said. "I want to look at that car."
Mr. Parson glanced at the automobile and quickly estimated its age.
"That's got to be more than thirty years old."
His daughter seemed not to hear. No sooner did his Subaru come to a stop than she was out the door and running toward the Mustang.
"Isn't she a beauty!" she exclaimed. "I love the color. I've never seen that shade of blue on a car. And, look, she's got a glass roof."
"Those panels come out," her father informed her. "It was called a T-top convertible or T-roof."
"I didn't know you knew so much about cars."
"Back when I was single, I had a Trans Am that had a roof like this."
"Really?" Samantha asked with surprise. "I can't picture you driving anything but a Subaru."
Mr. Parson laughed.
"I wasn't always a responsible, hard-working married man. I was young once, too."
As father and daughter looked through the windows at the interior of the car, which was aqua blue, several shades lighter than the exterior, a middle-aged woman came out of the house and headed in their direction.
"If you have any questions about the car, I'll be glad to answer them for you."
"Is this car yours?" Samantha asked.
"It is now. My father owned it, but he passed away a few months ago. My sister and I are still in the process of settling his estate."
"How much do you want for the car?"
"Fifteen hundred dollars."
"And what year is it?" Mr. Parson asked.
"1978."
"Can I get it, Dad?" Samantha asked eagerly.
"I think we should discuss it first."
Mr. Parson, who had agreed to lend his daughter the money to purchase a car, wanted to make sure she got one that would hold up until she could afford something newer.
The woman, anxious to get rid of the vehicle, dropped the price.
"I can let have it for a thousand, but that's as low as I'm willing to go. My father was a mechanic, and he kept the car in tip-top shape, inside and out. As you can see, there's no rust on this vehicle."
Samantha, who knew where to put the key in the ignition and where to put the nozzle from the gas pump into the car but little else about automobiles, let her father ask the questions.
"What about the mileage?"
"Just under eight thousand."
"That's all?" Mr. Parson asked with surprise.
"My father drove pick-up trucks. He only kept the Mustang for sentimental reasons."
"I can understand that. I often wish I still had my Trans Am. I'd love to take the roof off and drive down the interstate with my hair blowing in the wind."
Samantha could no more imagine her father with long hair than she could picture him driving a Trans Am.
"Would you like to take it for a test drive?" the woman asked.
Mr. Parson saw the look of excitement on his daughter's face and acceded. Rather than let his daughter drive, however, he got behind the wheel himself. After all, he was a much better judge of a car's handling and performance. He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started right up.
"It's an automatic. That's good," he said. "I won't have to teach you how to drive a stick shift."
After driving the car for approximately two miles, Mr. Parson had to admit that it seemed to run well.
"What do you think?" Samantha asked when her father pulled the car back up on the woman's lawn.
"It appears to be in good shape," he replied hesitantly.
"But ...?"
He tried not to let the look of disappointment on his daughter's face influence him.
"It's still an old car. There are hundreds of things that can go wrong with it. It could wind up costing you a lot of money to keep it on the road."
"I'll be working a full-time job."
"It's not just the money; it's the inconvenience, too. You could break down on the highway or be left stranded on some back road."
"Don't we have AAA?"
"Yes, but then you have to find another means to get to work while your car is being repaired."
"I can take the bus."
Mr. Parson saved his most compelling argument for last.
"The car has rear-wheel drive. It's not good for getting around on snowy and icy roads, not even with good snow tires."
"I think you just don't want me to get a sporty car," Samantha said with a pout.
"That's not it at all. Besides, the Mustang II was more of an economy car than a sports car."
Having run out of reasons why his daughter should not buy the vehicle, he took the key out of the ignition, turned to Samantha and declared, "I told you what I think. Although I'm willing to lend you the money, in the long run you're the one who will be paying for it. The decision is yours."
As a beaming smile lit up his daughter's pretty face, Mr. Parson took his wallet out of his pocket, and he handed the woman $100 in cash as a down payment on the Mustang.
* * *
Three days later, Samantha drove the car back to Puritan Falls with her father following behind in his Subaru Forester.
She loved everything about the Mustang: the brushed aluminum dashboard, the bucket seats, the dual side-view mirrors and the black and chrome sport steering wheel. She had wanted to remove the glass panels from the roof, but the weather was cold and damp. Not even when she burned a quarter of a tank of gas on her first round-trip commute to work did she regret her purchase.
"I can always carpool one or two days a week," she reasoned when she realized how much of her paycheck would be put into the Mustang's gas tank each week.
It was not until Samantha took her friend Jamie home from the mall one Saturday night that she encountered the first problem with the car. She dropped Jamie off and was heading east on Old Bridge Road when the car stalled out at the intersection with Adams Street. The young woman was not alarmed since Old Bridge Road was a low-traffic thoroughfare with only a thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, and Adams Street was a dirt road that was even less travelled.
After three attempts at restarting the engine, Samantha took her cell phone out of her purse to call AAA. Just as she was looking through her list of contacts for the emergency road service number, she saw a man driving a tow truck, heading toward her from the northern section of Adams Road. Since the Mustang was blocking the intersection, Herb Willits, the tow truck driver, had no choice but to stop.
"Run out of gas?" he asked, chauvinistically assuming most women ignored the fuel gages in their cars.
"No. I just filled up this afternoon. I don't know what's wrong. I was driving along, and the car just came to a stop."
"Here, let me give it a try," the middle-aged man suggested.
Samantha got out of the vehicle, and Herb got behind the wheel. He turned the key and the Mustang's engine roared to life.
"Seems to be working fine," he pronounced.
"I don't understand. I tried three times to start the car, but it wouldn't turn over."
"Maybe you flooded it. What you want to do is put your foot on the gas once, and then take your foot off the pedal and turn the key."
"Thanks a lot. Do I owe you anything?" she asked warily. "I have AAA."
"No need to pay me; I just turned the key."
Herb walked back to his tow truck, but when he turned in the girl's direction, his face clouded over.
"I know someone had a Mustang just like yours. It's a 1978, right?"
Samantha nodded.
"Isn't she a beauty? I just bought it a few weeks ago."
"Where'd you get it?"
"In Copperwell. It was parked on someone's front lawn."
"You buy this from a person named Gregson by any chance?"
"No. The name was Smith."
A look of relief came over Herb's face.
"It's not the same car then, but it sure looks like it—same color and all. Well, I gotta go. There's a Chevy in a ditch out on River Road, waiting for me to pull it out."
"Thanks again."
As Samantha drove away, she was unaware that Willits' eyes watched her car until the taillights were out of sight.
* * *
For the next few days, she was apprehensive whenever she put her foot on the brake, fearing the car would stall out again.
"There might have been dirt in the carburetor," her father hypothesized. "Why don't you put a bottle of fuel line cleaner in your gas tank the next time you fill up?"
A month passed, and after a bottle of Gumout, the problem didn't recur.
Samantha enjoyed her car throughout the summer and early autumn. On warm, sunny days she often removed the glass panels, opened her windows, pulled her hair back in a scrunchie and enjoyed the feel of the air rushing against her face. Not even the rising gas prices diminished her enjoyment of her vehicle.
Then, at the end of October, she attended a Halloween party given by an old college friend who lived on Naumkeag Road. At two in the morning, she said goodbye and headed home.
When Samantha turned off Naumkeag onto Old Bridge Road, she put the cassette adapter into the Mustang's tape deck so she could listen to the songs on her iPod. She was singing along with a Bruce Springsteen classic—a song she had grown up listening to because her parents were both Springsteen fans—as she approached the intersection with Adams Road.
As on the previous occasion, the car slowed and came to a stop at the intersection.
"Not again!" she cried.
She put her foot down on the gas pedal, just as Herb Willits had instructed, and then turned the key in the ignition. There was no sound except for Bruce's song and the persistent clicking of the turn signal.
"Funny, I don't remember putting my signal on."
She took her cell phone out of her purse, and, again, she saw the headlights of a tow truck coming down Adams Road toward the intersection.
Herb got out of the truck.
"This is déjà vu all over again," he laughed.
"There must be something to synchronicity," she responded.
"Synchro what?"
"Synchronicity. I guess you're not familiar with Carl Jung?"
"Doesn't he play for the Red Sox?"
Samantha shook her head and laughed.
"So, what's wrong this time?" he asked.
"Same thing. I was driving along, and the car just died when I got to the intersection."
"Did you try to start it like I told you: put your foot down on the gas pedal, take it off and then turn the key?"
"Yes, but I still didn't have any luck."
"Okay, I'll give it a try."
Samantha got out; Herb got in. She was relieved but embarrassed when the Mustang's six-cylinder engine started right up.
"My father thought the problem might be a dirty carburetor, so I put a bottle of Gumout in my gas tank. It worked fine after that. Maybe I ought to put another bottle in."
"Could be you got a lose carburetor, too. Maybe you should have your mechanic look at it."
"I will, and thanks again for your help."
"Always glad to help a pretty girl out."
As Samantha drove home she couldn't help wondering if Jung was right. Was there more than pure coincidence that the only two times the Mustang had stalled since she'd purchased it occurred at the same intersection, and both times Herb Willits was there to lend a hand.
* * *
When the first snowfall of winter came, Samantha learned why her father drove an all-wheel-drive vehicle. Not only did her car skid when she applied the brakes, but she also had no control over the steering. She would turn her wheel right, and the car would veer off to the left. Driving in the snow was bad enough, but she had no traction at all on ice, even with studded snow tires. Thankfully, there were few snowstorms that year. Thus, when they roads were bad, she stayed home from work rather than risk getting into an accident.
There are times, however, when bad weather has a way of sneaking up on you unannounced. One Sunday afternoon in January she spent the afternoon at Jamie's house watching a movie in the downstairs family room and wasn't aware that it had started snowing. It was only when the girls went upstairs for a snack that Samantha noticed the street and lawn were already covered in white.
"It wasn't supposed to snow," she said. "I really ought to go before the roads get too bad."
"Why don't you just spend the night here?" Jamie suggested.
"I can't. My parents went away for the weekend, and I have to take care of the dog."
Samantha quickly put on her coat, grabbed her handbag and keys and headed for the door.
"You be careful," her friend warned. "And give me a call when you get home."
"I will," she promised as she opened the driver's door of the Mustang.
The most direct route to the Parson house was Old Bridge Road. Unfortunately, the snow plows hadn't cleared the road yet. She briefly considered going the long way around, via Route 692, but she wasn't sure if that was plowed either.
"Old Bridge it is," she decided and made a left at the end of Jamie's road.
Although the Mustang fishtailed several times when she went around the bends, Samantha was able to keep the car on the road. Just when she relaxed, thinking she would make it home without incident, she approached the intersection with Adams Street.
"Come on, sweetheart," she spoke to her car. "Don't stall out on me."
Fearing the engine would die once again, she inadvertently gave it more gas than she had intended and set the car into a two hundred and seventy degree spin on the icy road. In a panic, she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal, but the Mustang kept going. The car was pointed north toward Adams Street when it finally came to a stop.
Shaken, Samantha buried her head in her trembling hands and cried.
A knock on the window startled her.
"Are you all right?"
Although Samantha couldn't see the man's face beneath the fur-trimmed hood of his parka, she recognized the voice. It belonged to Herb Willits, the tow truck driver.
"Y-yes," she replied. "I slid on the ice."
"You want me to start the car for you?"
Only then did Samantha realize that the engine had stalled again.
"If you don't mind."
"Did you have your mechanic take a look at the carburetor yet?"
"Yes, and he couldn't find anything wrong with it. I really hate being such a nuisance."
"I don't mind doing a favor for a pretty girl like you."
Something about the way Herb looked at her disturbed Samantha. She glanced uneasily at her surroundings and realized how isolated an area it was. The northern part of Adams Street ran through a heavily wooded area, and apparently Herb's mobile home was the only dwelling in the vicinity.
I could get killed out here, and no one would ever know, she thought morbidly.
The sound of the Mustang's engine coming to life was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.
"Thank you so much," she said, silently vowing she would stay far away from Adams Street in the future.
Herb stood up, but did not move away from the car. He towered over Samantha, and his large body blocked her way.
"You must be cold. You're shivering," he observed. "Why don't you come up to my house, and I'll make you a cup of hot chocolate?
"Thanks, really, but I have to get home. My parents are away, and I need to feed the dog and let him out."
"You're all alone, huh?"
Samantha was so anxious to get into her car and drive away that she did not realize the mistake she had made.
"Yeah, b-but not for long. My parents will be home soon. They might even be back already."
Still, Herb made no attempt to move.
"Why don't you get out your cell phone and call them?"
"I left my phone at home," she lied.
"I bet if I was to open your handbag, I'd find it there."
"Excuse me," she said, her anger giving her the courage to speak up. "But I've got to go, and you're standing in my way."
A wide grin appeared on Herb's face, but the imbecilic smile made him more terrifying than before. Finally, however, he moved aside and made no attempt to prevent Samantha from leaving.
As she slowly drove through the steadily falling snow, she prayed the car would not stall again, and for once God, Saint Christopher or Henry Ford was listening and smiling down on her.
* * *
Samantha was still shaken when she entered her house twenty minutes later. After a cup of coffee, her nerves calmed somewhat. She fed the dog and phoned Jamie, letting her friend know she made it home in one piece. After she hung up the receiver, she noticed a phone number scribbled on the pad beside the kitchen wall phone. It was the number of Mrs. Smith, the woman who had sold her the Mustang.
She picked the receiver back up and dialed the number.
After identifying herself, Samantha asked, "Did your father ever have a problem with the car stalling out?"
"I don't even know if my father ever drove the car," the woman said. "It wasn't his, you see. It belonged to my sister."
"Did she have a problem with the car?"
"I doubt it. Cheryl loved that car! It was her baby. That's why my father kept it all those years."
"Why? Is your sister deceased?"
There was a silence at the other end of the line.
"Forgive me," Samantha apologized. "I guess I shouldn't have asked that question."
"No, it's all right. I just don't have an answer for you. I don't know if my sister is alive or not. No one has heard from her since 1979. She went to work one morning and never came home. We found her car abandoned by the side of the road, but there was no sign of her. Her purse, coat and keys were gone. In the months that followed her disappearance, there were reports from people who claimed to have seen her in Essex Green, Boston and even New York, but the police were unable to locate her. My father kept the car, hoping she'd return. Now that he's gone—well, I see no reason to hold out any false hopes."
"I'm so sorry. I ...."
Samantha suddenly dropped the phone when she saw a figure pass by the kitchen window on its way to the back yard. She heard a voice call from the other end of the line, but she was too frightened to speak.
"Miss Parson? Are you there?"
The dog began barking when he heard the man trying to enter the house. Samantha had no time to call for help before Herb Willits broke the glass on the patio doors and forced his way inside. Her first and only instinct was to run. She grabbed her keys and sprinted to the garage.
As the electronic overhead garage door opened, she started the engine and put the car into reverse. She backed down the driveway, and the car stalled.
"Damn it!" she swore, frantically turning the key and pumping the gas.
She looked up from the dashboard and saw Herb leering at her from inside the garage. He took one step closer, then two.
Samantha screamed, and both her hands went to her face. Abruptly, the engine came to life, and although the car was in park, it jumped forward and drove into the garage.
Taken by surprise, Willits didn't have time to react. The Mustang pinned him against the back wall of the garage with a force that shattered both his legs.
"You bitch!" he screamed, his upper body writhing in agony. "I should have known it was you the first time I saw that car. Those lies you told about the engine stalling near my house—all the while you knew who I was."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she cried, sitting at the wheel with the doors locked, afraid to step outside the car.
"You've come back. You ...."
Those were the last words he spoke before he passed out from the pain. Moments later, Samantha saw a Puritan Falls police patrol car pull into the driveway behind her and heard the welcome sound of Officer Shawn McMurtry's voice.
* * *
After the ambulance took Herb Willits away to the hospital, McMurtry phoned Samantha's parents and told them about the break-in.
"Your daughter's fine," he assured them. "Just frightened, which is quite understandable. I'll have someone secure the back door, and then I'll drive her to her friend's house."
While Samantha and Shawn waited for a repairman to fix the broken patio door, the young woman told the police officer about her previous encounters with the tow truck driver.
"He knew the car, did he?" Shawn asked.
"Yes, and it belonged to a girl who went missing back in 1979."
"I remember hearing about that case when I was a kid. A lot of people assumed she ran away with a boyfriend, but ...."
"The last thing Mr. Willits said before he passed out was that I had come back. I think he thought I was her."
* * *
The following day Officer Shawn McMurtry met with Detective Stanley Yablonski. Although Shawn had little to go on except a hunch that Herb Willits was involved in Cheryl Gregson’s disappearance, the detective was able to dig up enough evidence to obtain a warrant to search the tow truck driver's mobile home.
In the back of one of Herb's dresser drawers, McMurtry found a set of keys: one house key and two keys that bore the familiar Ford logo. The decoration on the key ring was a piece of leather strap with a medallion of the Mustang emblem.
He turned and smiled at Yablonski.
"Ten to one this key will start Samantha Parson's car."
Having found the key ring in Willits' possession, Detective Yablonski considered the tow truck driver a person of interest in Cheryl Gregson's disappearance. As his partner, Phil Langston, dug up all the files of the cold case, Yablonski, with McMurtry in tow, paid the suspect a visit at the hospital.
"What did you do with the body?" Yablonski asked.
"I don't know anything about a body," Herb insisted.
"We found Cheryl Gregson's keys in your drawer."
"She gave them to me. Her car stalled out on Old Bridge Road, and she couldn't get it started. She asked that I tow the car to her garage and give the keys to her father."
"And where did she go then?"
Herb shrugged.
"I don't know. I didn't ask her. Last I saw she was walking toward town."
"If what you say is true, why didn't you tow her car? Why did you leave it on the side of the road, and why didn't you come forward when the police asked for information about the girl's disappearance."
"I didn't want to get involved."
"I think you are involved," Yablonski maintained, as he rose from his chair to leave. "I think you know more than you're telling us. In fact, I'm going to the judge to get a court order to have a backhoe dig up the ground around your house."
"Go ahead," Herb said with a confident smile. "Dig up the whole block. You won't find anything."
"Cocky bastard!" Yablonski said as he and McMurtry got into the detective's unmarked car.
"He did seem pretty confident that we wouldn't find a body," Shawn said, disappointed that his hunch hadn't panned out.
"Either he didn't kill her or he disposed of the body in some other way. I'll keep the pressure on him, but with only a key ring to go on, I don't see how we can charge him with murder."
Yablonski drove back to Adams Street where the home search was coming to an end.
"Find anything else?" the detective asked.
"Nothing," one of the police officers replied.
McMurtry was leaning against the unmarked car, staring at the mobile home.
"I got a gut feeling that he did it," he told Yablonski.
"You can't convict a man on gut feeling, Shawn. But cheer up. At least we ought to be able to put him away for a few years on breaking and entering."
Shawn shook his head with disgust.
"He's going to get away with it."
Yablonski chuckled.
"You've watched too many episodes of Cold Case. The girl's been missing over thirty years. We'll probably never know what happened to her."
McMurtry's eyes went to the aluminum siding at the bottom of the mobile home that hid the axel from view. Again he got another of his familiar hunches.
"Willits told us to go ahead and dig up the property, right?" he asked the detective. "He was confident we wouldn't find anything. What if he was confident because the body was not on the property but in the house itself?"
"We just had three men go over every inch of the place, and they didn't find anything."
"What about the crawlspace?"
This time McMurtry's hunch was correct. The remains of Cheryl Gregson were found buried in the ground beneath Herb Willits' mobile home. When faced with the corpus delicti of his crime, the tow truck driver admitted to the murder.
"Isn't she a beauty?" he asked when he was shown a photograph of his victim. "I couldn't help myself. She was so pretty, so helpless. Not like that other one. That crazy bitch tried to run me over with a car. I want you to arrest her for attempted murder."
However, the police had no intention of bringing charges against Miss Parson, whom they believed acted in self-defense.
* * *
It was several days before Samantha could speak of the incident. Then she finally summoned the courage to walk into the garage with her father and look at the Mustang.
"I don't know how it happened," she tearfully confessed. "I swear I didn't even have my foot on the gas pedal. The car was stalled and in park, when all of a sudden it just shot up the driveway and into the garage. It was as though it had a mind of its own."
"You were upset," her father said soothingly. "It's only natural you're confused about what really happened. Anyway, you have to decide what you want to do about the car. You don't have collision coverage on your insurance, but we might be able to find an auto body shop that could replace the bumper and straighten out the hood."
"No," she said emphatically. "I don't want it fixed. I'll just have to chalk it up as a loss and get another car."
"Are you sure?" her father asked.
"It is a beautiful car, but it could never be mine. It'll always belong to Cheryl Gregson. Besides," she concluded, hugging her father, "I think I need a car that can get around in the winter. After all, you never know when my life will depend on it."
The first car I ever bought was a brand new 1978 Ford Mustang II, aqua with light aqua interior and a T-top convertible roof, which looked similar to the one in the picture below.
This car comes fully loaded - cat and all!
