Summer in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  SUMMER IN MOSSY CREEK

  A collective novel featuring the voices of

  Deborah Smith

  Sandra Chastain

  Debra Dixon

  Martha Shields

  and

  Carolyn McSparren

  Anne Bishop

  Susan Goggins

  Bo Sebastian

  Kim Brock

  Shelly Gail Morris

  Judy Keim

  Patti Callahan Henry

  Praise for Mossy Creek and Reunion at Mossy Creek

  “Delightful.”

  —Georgia First Lady Marie Barnes

  “Mitford meets Mayberry in the first book of this innovative and warmhearted new series from BelleBooks.”

  —The Cleveland Daily Banner, Cleveland, Tennessee

  “MOSSY CREEK is as much fun as a cousin reunion; like sipping ice cold lemonade on a hot summer’s afternoon. Hire me a moving van, it’s the kind of town where everyone wishes they could live.”

  —Debbie Macomber, NYT bestselling author

  “A fast, funny, and folksy read. Enjoy!”

  —Lois Battle, acclaimed author of Storyville,

  Bed and Breakfast, and

  The Florabama Ladies Sewing Club and Auxiliary

  “REUNION AT MOSSY CREEK is down home story telling at its best.”

  —Jackie K Cooper, WMAC-AM, Macon, Georgia

  “Colorfully and cleverly portrayed. A wholesome story.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Amazon.com’s top reviewer

  “The characters and kinships of MOSSY CREEK are quirky, hilarious and all too human. This story reads like a delicious, meringue-covered slice of home. I couldn’t get enough.”

  —Pamela Morsi, USA Today bestselling author

  “I want to live in Mossy Creek.”

  —Astrid Kinn, Romance Reviews Today

  “These Southern belle authors have done it again, even better this time.”

  —Bob Spear, Heartland Reviews

  Summer in Mossy Creek

  by

  Deborah Smith

  Sandra Chastain

  Debra Dixon

  Martha Shields

  and

  Carolyn McSparren

  Anne Bishop

  Susan Goggins

  Bo Sebastian

  Kim Brock

  Shelly Gail Morris

  Judy Keim

  Patti Callahan Henry

  BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  BelleBooks

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-935661-11-5

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9673035-4-3

  Copyright © 2003 by BelleBooks, Inc.

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Martha Crockett

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Mossy Creek map: Dino Fritz

  Photo credits:

  Cover photo © Randi Utne | fotolia.com

  :Emsc:01:

  Map of Mossy Creek

  Summer in Mossy Creek

  Welcome from the Mossy Creek Storytellers Club

  Welcome back to Mossy Creek, Georgia, the small mountain town where love, laughter and kindness are facts of life but people cheerfully live up to the stubborn pioneer-era slogan still painted on a grain silo at the town limits: “Welcome to Mossy Creek. The town you can count on. Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, And Don’t Want To.” The namesake creek circles the town like a moat, and people like it that way.

  “Creekites” come in every size, shape, color and country of national origin, but they all share a love of small town living and sheer, feisty independence. Whether it’s feuding with their snobby neighbors down in the “big town” of Bigelow or one-upping Governor Ham Bigelow, an arrogant native son who wants to see Mossy Creek tamed once and for all, Creekites are always ready for a fight or a celebration.

  The writers who contribute their voices to the Mossy Creek Hometown Series think of themselves as The Mossy Creek Storytelling Club, and they tell these Creekite tales with a true love for the town and its quirky people. So pull up a chair on our porch, sip some iced tea, enjoy the sweet whisper of the creek and the view of the Southern mountains, and join us for a warm, poignant, funny, crazy summer in Mossy Creek.

  Many thanks to Laura Austin, who contributed the art that graces this book’s cover, also many thanks to Lillian Richey for the whimsical “A Guide to the People and Places of Mossy Creek” readers will find in the back this book. Thanks once again to Wayne Dixon, aka Bubba Rice, for contributing recipes so wickedly good only a Southern bubba could have created them, and thanks to Ali Cunliffe, copy editor extraordinaire, who makes sure we don’t mess up the spelling for words like extraordinaire.

  Happy reading!

  The Mossy Creek Storytellers Club

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  Volume III, No. 1 * Mossy Creek, Georgia

  The Bell Ringer

  A Welcome Note To Our Summer Tourists

  by Katie Bell

  Ahhh, summertime in Mossy Creek. After midnight, O’Day’s Pub and Hamilton House Inn close down and the town goes soft and quiet. The sky in Mossy Creek is coal black, alive with lightning bugs blinking in unison to the pin cushion of stars overhead. You can hear the breeze ruffling the trees and the musical sound of the frogs croaking their mating calls in the Creek. Those of us who live here have always believed our summer nights are filled with magic that clears away the discord and makes the world ready for tomorrow.

  Morning starts the bustle of life once more. Those of you who’ve come to visit in Mossy Creek have met many of our residents. You smile at the cheerful shops around the square and ask how such charm has been protected. The buildings are over a hundred years old.

  Not necessarily. From the beginning we’ve preserved the look of our town. New buildings have been added but Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker and Bert Lyman, owner of WMOS Radio, have worked with Fix-It Shop owner Dan McNeil, who heads the historical district’s planning committee, to maintain the ambiance of Mossy Creek. In no way have we forced our more eccentric shop owners to tone down their personalities. Creekites are original and they’re stubborn, but we give them lots of help and they love their little town.

  Gossip continues to be shared freely, though it can be slightly tainted by the gossiper. So forgive us if we sometimes mislead. And if our local purveyor of secrets (me) doesn’t tell all, drop me a note. I’ll try to find out what you want to know, and who knows? I might even print it in the Gazette.

  This summer in Mossy Creek promises to be special. Come sit a spell in the gazebo or join me for English tea at the Hamilton House Inn and I’ll catch you up on all the news as it happens.

  Chapter One

  AMOS and DOG

  “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world
walks out.”

  —Mencius

  A GOOD leather recliner.

  That’s all a man really needs to be happy. I ran my hand possessively over the butter-soft leather arm of my just-delivered chair and leaned back into heaven. The recliner was a custom job, extra-long when stretched out full-length. Josie McClure over at Swee Purla’s helped me pick it out weeks ago. The start of summer is a strange time to acquire a hot leather chair, even in Mossy Creek, where summer and strange go hand-in-hand as the temperature rises. I hadn’t really intended to buy an honest-to-God-real-leather chair that day. The thing cost more than a month’s salary.

  But, as Josie carefully explained to me when I balked at the price tag she put on paradise, there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to stop living like a bear in a cave. She’s an ardent believer in the Japanese art of feng shui as a way to visualize and change your life. I wasn’t so certain furniture philosophy was going to change my life, but I was willing to be convinced. A leather chair was the pot of gold at the end of enlightenment. So, I nodded and made hmm-ing sounds.

  Sort of like I did now. Mac Campbell was on the other end of the phone, having a great deal of fun at my expense.

  “Patty said Josie’s worried about you. Apparently you’re about one feng shui faux pas away from total chaos.”

  “You’re about one crack away from about a dozen parking tickets.”

  “Touchy, aren’t you?”

  “You would be, too. Patty’s blowing this all out of proportion. I only agreed with Josie that it was about time I replaced the castoff furniture I’ve either inherited or liberated from divorcing-couple garage sales. I haven’t agreed to anything else.”

  Mac’s hoot of laughter kept me honest.

  “Okay. Not much else.” I could actually hear Mac’s grin all the way through the phone.

  “Son, you are living in a house with a toilet in the wealth area. You’d better agree to change something. Patty thinks you need to focus on your relationship area first.”

  “Mac, why do I need a relationship area if I don’t have a relationship at the moment?”

  “You’re right. The first order of business is having your chi all messed up because your back door and front door line up.”

  “They aren’t actually lined up.”

  “Close enough that Josie made you promise to keep the toilet lid down and avoid opening the back door until she could do a full-scale analysis of the problems—free of charge.”

  That much was true. Josie had declared a state of emergency and had taken my case on a pro bono basis. At least for the consulting. The rest of it she charged through the nose for. That first consultation with Josie shocked more than my pocketbook. It shocked me out of denial. She was right, I had to change some things. I had to stop pretending that this job, Mossy Creek and the house were just way stations in my life. That I’d be moving on to bigger and better things eventually. Truth is . . . I’m not going anywhere and really don’t want to. There might be bigger, but I doubted there’d be better. It was time to accept Mossy Creek was my town for better or worse, until death do us part.

  Especially now that I’d made the supreme sacrifice and engaged a decorator.

  “Trust me, Mac. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for, I’m not sure I would have gone through with the consultation. I thought I was just shopping.”

  “You don’t shop at Swee Purla’s; you have a consultation. Everyone knows that.”

  “Apparently not me. I thought it would be easy to get someone to fix up the house for me and save me all the trouble. How long can it take to buy a few pieces of furniture and maybe new blinds? Dammit, Mac, I didn’t want a place worthy of some national design magazine centerfold. I didn’t want fancy. All I wanted was to make my house feel a little more like home and less like an empty military barracks.”

  “Hey, I understand. Me and the boys are rooting for you.”

  “What?” I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Well, you’re in Josie’s cross-hairs now. Won’t be long before you’ll be looking at paint chips. Unless you can break free.”

  “I have to go.” Bang my head into the hallway wall. The one with test paint patches on it. I hung up.

  I had been foolish and naive. I hadn’t known anything about feng shui. But my biggest mistake was not realizing that the force was strong with Josie. I was toast. Quite literally.

  My idea of color theory is that tan is, well . . . just tan, and it pretty much goes with everything. Ha! Apparently there is some worldwide conspiracy to fragment the color tan into about a million sub-colors that all look exactly the same but are called foo-foo names like sandstone and harvest wheat and toast. Then—just when you think you’ve got a handle on the tan thing—the decorator asks trick questions like, “Which of these three paint chips is closer to your wall color?”

  Huh?

  My walls are white. Don’t get me started on what the decorators of the world have done to the color white! It’s actually scary.

  If color torture weren’t enough, whatever furniture you order has to be delivered to you when it finally arrives—by a big truck with Swee’s logo plastered all over it. Every woman on the block now thinks I’m just one big-screen TV short of having a wicked bachelor’s pad. That’s what happens when you’re single and have a new stereo system delivered the day before you have a leather chair delivered.

  The combination is fatal.

  My buddies thought I was going over to the dark side. The women in town thought I was going over to the dark side. The two groups just didn’t agree on what the dark side was.

  Sighing, I hauled myself out of my newly beloved chair so I could haul myself down to the station. Might as well give Sandy her chance to comment on my sudden wild streak. She wasn’t expecting me until later in the day, but I figured there’s no time like the present to get the unpleasantness over with. A little grilling never hurt anyone. Not much. Besides, Sandy could use some cheering up.

  “HI, CHIEF.” SANDY reached for the pink message slips she had piled on top of the row of file cabinets and walked them over to the counter. When she actually handed them to me and turned back to her filing without saying a word about my new chair or the messages, I began to worry about my favorite dispatcher. She never, ever, allowed me to sort my own messages. Hell, I was rarely allowed to touch them.

  Looking at the slips in my hand, I had to admit the truth. The effervescent Sandy Crane was officially depressed, and I knew why. Not that I could do anything about it.

  Sandy still spent most of her time in the office even though she’d been promoted to “officer.” She was having some trouble qualifying on the firing range. With a rifle and a decent scope she can shoot the tail feathers off a hawk at 600 yards, but using a pistol she couldn’t put more than two in a row in the kill zone of a paper target. Why? Closing your eyes as you pull the trigger pretty much insures a bad score.

  She was shooting herself in the foot . . . so to speak.

  My guess was Sandy’s soft nature couldn’t reconcile itself to shooting anything that looked like a person. Or she was afraid she’d make the wrong decision when push came to pull. God willing, she’d never have to pull a gun or shoot anyone in a town like Mossy Creek, but I have a responsibility to the citizens and, more importantly, to Sandy. I can’t put her on the streets unless she can do the job. All the job.

  She either qualifies like every other officer or she works the desk. Even Battle wouldn’t have bent that rule. The issue is strictly black and white, governed by state regulations. For once, there isn’t even a smidgeon of gray area for me to agonize over.

  Sandy doesn’t blame me, but it breaks my heart to see the sparkle fading from her smile. She worries that her dream of being a real officer is slipping through her trigger finger. The harder she tries the wor
se her scores get.

  The hell of it is, Sandy was born to be a small town cop. She loves the people, makes it her business to know everyone and genuinely wants the best for Mossy Creek. Watching Sandy quietly filing our meager stack of incident reports, I knew I’d have to give this problem some more thought.

  In the meantime, I had a couple of questions about my messages. I’ve gotten used to Sandy putting them in context and making sure I had all the important background on the issues. Seeing the pristine, un-annotated messages in my hand was a little like reading a book with blank pages. I didn’t quite know what the plot was.

  “Hannah called? Someone moving the books in the library again?”

  “Nope.” She didn’t even turn around to answer me. “That whole book moving thing doesn’t usually happen for a few more weeks.”

  Okay, now I was really worried. The old Sandy would have practically bounced as she relayed the info, making plans to stake out the library for the annual moving of the books event. It happened every year near the beginning of the summer and near the end of the summer. Well, it had happened for the last year and a half, long enough to establish a pattern of harmless mischief. A mystery. But Sandy wasn’t even interested.

  “So,” I prompted. “Why is Hannah calling?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. I figure that’s her business.”

  I clamped down hard on my response. Now was not the time to remind Sandy that as our dispatcher it was her job to screen my calls. I made a mental note to have a talk with Jess, her husband. Then I asked, “Okay. Next question. Did Dwight say why he needs me at the special council meeting he’s calling tomorrow night?”

  “No.”

  “Sandy, I know he wouldn’t actually say why. That would ruin his little surprise plan. It’s always a secret coup with him. But, you, you know, right? You’ve always got an ear to the ground. I count on you for the good stuff. Don’t let me down now. What’s Dwight’s emergency?”

  She looked up from her filing, a tiny bit of the sparkle was back. “I think he’s tired of the kids playing in the park.”