A story that shares the fun of working with witty people, the torture of parenting teenagers, and the seduction of amateur sleuthing, even when it is life threatening, The Woodsy Road also raises questions about the confidentiality of the therapist's office and the power we grant those with whom we share our secrets. A fun journey back to the '70's, a simpler, but still problematic time, The Woodsy Road is also a window into the mysteries of love and loss, which are even more difficult to solve than murder.
It's a sunny autumn morning in 1971, and Greta Carey, widowed mother of five, is walking to her job at the counseling center of Grant College. Ahead, she notices the center's unpleasant social worker, Dominic Bolo, limping along the road as well. Normally, he drives a flashy sports car. Later, Greta and her snarky colleague, Joan, joke about his relationship with his trophy car.
A few weeks later, Dominic is dead, bludgeoned to death in the men's room of a downtown bar.
The police question Greta, one of the last people to see him before the murder, and they let it slip that Dominic had a gambling problem, along with a tendency to borrow money from the wrong people. They are assuming the murder is a mob job.
Shaken, Greta invites Joan to her house to dish about what happened, and after a few martinis, they talk about Greta's experience of widowhood and Joan's feelings about her late mother. Though a few years have passed since losing their loved ones, they are both still grappling with grief and loss.
Reserved Greta doesn't share her worries about Maryanne, her 17-year-old daughter who is dating a grown man and meeting with a psychologist at the counseling center, nor about her sullen 15-year-old son who thinks hitchhiking to California after graduation is a viable career plan.
Later in the evening, when Maryanne and her friend, Jody, come home, Greta and Joan tell them about the murder. Surprisingly, Maryanne bursts into tears, thinking that she was the sole witness to an argument at the counseling center that suggested Dominic was blackmailing one of the center's interns, a Catholic priest, who then surely killed him. Greta and Joan reassure her that actually, the Mafia committed the murder.
But that Monday, when Greta cleans out Dominic's desk, she finds evidence that he likely did blackmail someone. She returns his belongings to his wife who complains that the police are wrong about the Mafia killing her husband, that he'd sold his car to pay the loan shark, who therefore had no motivation to kill him.
Meanwhile, Joan is gone, leaving Greta a note claiming to be nursing her sick mother, whom Greta knows to be dead. When time passes, and Joan doesn't return, Greta investigates and learns that she abandoned Pickle, her much beloved dog, which Joan would never do willingly. She relays her suspicions to the police about the evidence of blackmail she found, and about Joan's disappearance, but they condescendingly dismiss them.
Just as Greta vows to give up trying to solve Dominic's murder and Joan's disappearance and focus exclusively on her family, someone tries to kill her too. Greta, terrified, desperately wants to escape from the danger she's in. She looks for another job and contemplates a move.
Maybe the evidence Greta has gathered about Dominic's murder and the attempt on her own life is all her imagination. The police think so, and, as it turns out, so does her mother. Greta must consider the possibility that they are right. But if they're not, she must figure out how to stay alive.
