Critters of Mossy Creek Read online

  Critters of Mossy Creek

  A collective novel featuring the voices of

  Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Martha Crockett and Debra Dixon

  with

  Susan Goggins, Maureen Hardegree, Michele Hauf, Kathleen Watson Hodges

  Pam Mantovani and Carolyn McSparren

  DEDICATIONS

  This book is dedicated to all the furry, finned and feathered friends that have touched our lives with their love and companionship.

  Sandra Chastain dedicates her story to Rosie (Pomeranian) who loves everyone, Baby (cat) who stops traffic by walking on a leash with Rosie, me and Weople (wild Yorkshire Terrier).

  Martha Crockett dedicates her story to Marvin, a beloved Cairn “terror” who died just a few months before this book went to press.

  Debra Dixon dedicates her story to Sweetie, who showed up at precisely the right time.

  Susan Goggins dedicates her story to Longjohn, the best dog-in-a-cat’s-body in the history of the world.

  Maureen Hardegree dedicates her story to the tortoiseshell calico who taught her that she could love a cat as much as a dog.

  Michele Hauf dedicates her story to the cats in her house, Maxwell and Toast, and with loving memory to the best cat ever, Sebastian.

  Kathleen Watson Hodges dedicates her story to Simon, the loudest, stinkiest, most obnoxious bird on the planet that stole her daughter’s heart and thus earned a place in hers.

  Everyone gets one great dog per lifetime. Carolyn McSparren’s was Bruin, a big, black part-Labrador foundling. She also acknowledges Gamby and Katie, the two Bouviers who collaborated on Louise & the Marauders.

  Deborah Smith dedicates her story to a palomino barrel horse named Reb’s Buck, who shared her teenage years with loyalty and patience.

  Critters of Mossy Creek

  Odd Places & Beautiful Spaces

  A Guide to the Towns & Attractions

  of the South

  Mossy Creek, Georgia

  Don’t miss this quirky, historic Southern village on your drive through the Appalachian mountains! Located in a breathtaking valley two hours north of Atlanta, the town (1,700 residents, established 1839) is completely encircled by its lovely namesake creek. Picturesque bridges span the creek around the turn-of-the-century town square like charms on a bracelet. Be sure to arrive via the scenic route along South Bigelow Road, the main two-lane from Bigelow, Mossy Creek’s big-sister city, hometown of Georgia governor Ham Bigelow. (Don’t be surprised if you overhear “Creekites” in heated debate about Ham, who’s the nephew of longtime Mossy Creek mayor, Ida Walker.) You’ll know when you reach the Mossy Creek town limits — just look for the charming, whitewashed grain silo by the road at Mayor Walker’s farm. Painted with the town’s pioneer motto — Ain’t goin’ nowhere, and don’t want to — the silo makes a great photo opportunity. The motto perfectly sums up the stubborn (but not unfriendly) free spirits you’ll find everywhere in what the chamber of commerce calls “Greater Mossy Creek,” which includes the outlying mountain communities of Bailey Mill, Over, Yonder, and Chinaberry.

  Lodging, Dining, and Attractions: Shop and eat to your heart’s delight around the town’s shady square. Don’t miss Mama’s All You Can Eat Café, Beechum’s Bakery (be sure to say hello to Bob, the “flying” Chihuahua), The Naked Bean coffee shop, O’Day’s Pub, the Bubba Rice Diner, Hamilton’s Department Store (featuring the origami napkin work of local beauty queen Josie McClure Rutherford), Hamilton House Inn, the I Probably Got It store, Moonheart’s Natural Living, and Mossy Creek Books and What-Nots. Drop by town hall for a look at the notorious Ten-Cent Gypsy (a carnival booth at the heart of a dramatic Creekite mystery). Stop by the town jail for an update on local shenanigans courtesy of Officer Sandy Crane, who calls herself “the gal in front of the man behind the badge,” Mossy Creek Police Chief Amos Royden (recently featured in Georgia Today Magazine as the sexiest bachelor police chief in the state). And don’t forget to pop into the newspaper offices of the Mossy Creek Gazette, where you can get the latest event news from Katie Bell, local gossip columnist extraordinaire.

  As Katie Bell likes to say, “In Mossy Creek, I can’t make up better stories than the truth.”

  The Mossy Creek Gazette

  215 Main Street • Mossy Creek, Georgia

  From the Desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager

  Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope

  The Cliffs, Seaward Road

  St. Ives, Cornwall TR37PJ

  United Kingdom

  Dear Vick:

  Spring has finally broken through the winter here in Mossy Creek! And we’re plumb glad to see it come. The buttercups have already come and gone, the azaleas are in their prime and the dogwoods and rhododendrons are just around the corner.

  You know, one thing I’ve never asked you about is pets. Do you have a dog or cat or anything furry and warm to cuddle up to on cold winter nights?

  Creekites have all kinds of critters in our barnyards . . . and our backyards, too! Mostly the winter here in Mossy Creek! And we’re plumb glad to see it come. The buttercups have already come and gone, the azaleas are in their prime and the dogwoods and rhododendrons are just around the corner.

  You know, one thing I’ve never asked you about is pets. Do you have a dog or cat or anything furry and warm to cuddle up to on cold winter nights?

  Creekites have all kinds of critters in our barnyards . . . and our backyards, too! Mostly rest of the world. Although we can get a little exotic. Coons and possums and even a beaver or two have come and gone over the years. One Eagle Scout a few years back nursed a wounded eagle back to health. How’s that for irony? The whole town watched him set it free. It flew off, purty as you please, right back to Colchick Mountain. We even had a dancing bear a few months ago.

  I don’t know why, but for some reason I picture you with one of those little lap Spaniels. Write and set me straight!

  Your azalea-sniffin’ correspondent,

  Katie

  “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”

  —Roger Caras

  The Mice that Roared

  Part One

  Jayne Reynolds

  Odd, isn’t it, how things and animals and people come into your life.

  While it’s happening, it seems rather random.

  You make love to your perfectly healthy husband and a month later, he dies of an aggressive cancer. Yet somehow you wind up pregnant. You feed a poor, pitiful cat that shows up at your door. You unwittingly start a feud with the owner of the bakery next door to your new coffee house the first day you open.

  The next thing you know, you have a pet for the next twenty years, you have your husband’s son, and you wind up buying the bakery and hiring the owner who has become a dear friend.

  It seems to me that when you look back over the years, you can see how all the pieces of your life’s puzzle fit together and you get the distinct feeling that each event was meant to be.

  Looking forward, life may be a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump’s mother purported. But when you look back, you realize life is a mosaic. Though you think you’re making random choices with each piece you place in your life’s work of art, in the end you have a complete picture, and you understand that each one of those pieces was destined to be in just that spot.

  Take my moving to Mossy Creek a few years ago, for instance. At the time, I was operating in a fog of grief over my husband’s death, and I didn’t much care where I was. I just couldn’t stay in the place where he and I had spent so many happy years. Yet, what I thought had been a knee-jerk reaction turned out to be one of the main themes in my life’s mosaic.

  I’ve found a true home in Mossy Creek. I’ve been accep
ted for who I am. Am loved for who I am. And while I still miss Matthew, it’s almost as if I’d been living another life back then.

  Now I feel as if I’m adding jewels to my mosaic, not just dull-colored pieces of tile.

  Oh gracious. Listen to me, waxing all rhapsodic. I guess I just have mosaics on the brain.

  Tiles, anyway.

  Which one? Which one?

  I picked up my top three choices and took them over to the fading spring light of my shop’s window to see if that would help me make up my mind.

  The Naked Bean’s front door opened. “Jayne?”

  I glanced over see Ingrid Beechum holding the door open with her back as she wiped her hands on a dish towel. Her dog, Bob, stood patiently at her feet, looking up at me because that’s what his beloved mistress was doing. The Chihuahua’s sight had gotten so bad, I doubted he could actually see me. The white apron Ingrid always wore was missing, so I knew it was time to close up shop.

  “That time already?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Since you’re the boss now, I thought I’d check in before I locked the door . . . for the last time.”

  We grinned at each other. We’d begun our relationship as mortal enemies, but were now partners . . . of a sort.

  Several months ago, Ingrid had a health scare about the big “C. Turned out everything was fine, but it put the fear of God in her, and the upshot of that was, she decided to sell Beechum’s Bakery to me.

  It made good business sense for me, because what complimented gourmet coffee more than bakery goods? And since the bakery shared a wall with The Naked Bean, it wasn’t going to take much to make the two shops into one. Or so Dan McNeil, our town handyman, promised me.

  From our truculent beginning, Ingrid and I’d had a tacit agreement that I wouldn’t sell baked goods, and she wouldn’t sell coffee. That meant, of course, that customers had to go from one shop to the other to get both, and many of them did. When the portal was finished, however—hopefully before the weekend was over—they’d no longer have to go outside.

  Ingrid and I weren’t technically partners, of course, since I owned both places, but I wanted to think of it that way, and I wanted her to think of it that way.

  Ingrid still worked at the bakery, but now she had a tidy little nest egg in case something really did happen, and she didn’t have to worry about the managerial aspects of running a business, which she never liked anyway, and I loved. Now all she had to do was create her wonderful pies and cookies and cakes.

  She was happy. I was happy. Our customers were going to be happy. It was a win-win situation all ’round.

  Which brought me back to the tile.

  Dan McNeil’s crew started work tomorrow. Dan said it’d only take a few days to join the two shops, then he’d start work on my apartment upstairs. All of this renovation had been approved by the landlord, Mossy Creek Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker. She and her relatives own major portions of the town but are, thankfully, open to innovation.

  With my son Matt approaching three years of age, I needed more room than the tiny, one-bedroom loft over The Naked Bean, in which he and I had been living. Now that I owned the bakery, I was going to expand our living quarters into the bakery’s long-unused second floor.

  “Come help me decide which of these to use in the master bath,” I said to Ingrid.

  “Ingie!”

  Ingrid bent to catch Matt, who’d launched himself at her from the children’s play area in the corner of the shop.

  She’d been looking for him, so she caught him deftly.

  He laughed and planted a loud kiss on her cheek. He giggled at the noise he’d made and pushed up his goggles from his Bob the Builder Power Tool set. Ingrid had bought the toy for him to encourage his interest in the upcoming construction. Not that she had to. Matt had shown an early interest in building and engineering. Tinker Toys, Legos and old-fashioned Lincoln Logs were his favorite toys. Just like his father.

  “You haven’t helped Mama pick out her tile?” Ingrid asked Matt as she came up beside me, Bob the Chihuahua at her heels.

  “I like the tav’tine,” he said with definite decision.

  Ingrid looked over the selections I held up and nodded. “I think you’re right, Matt. I like that, too.”

  I’d been surprised that Matt picked the same tile that I was leaning toward. Kids usually went for flash. “So do I. Josie gave me two conservative choices, knowing I’m not too exciting, and one ‘decorator’ choice. This blue-green glass combination here.”

  “You’re just as exciting as the next person,” Ingrid countered, letting Matt down to play with Bob. “The blue tile is too vivid. I think you’d get tired of it pretty quick. But you can live with the travertine for years and years. It’s so earthy. Like you.”

  I held the tile in the weak sunlight. “Yeah. Josie says I have a double dose of earth, since I’m a Capricorn-Ox.”

  “Humphf.” Ingrid made no secret about her skepticism regarding Josie’s astrological observations.

  “Hey, you’re the one who made the ‘earthy’ comment,” I countered, then changed the subject. “Ready for a long weekend off?”

  “Weekend off?” Ingrid archly raised her brow. “You mean we’re not taking cookies and coffee to the soccer game on Saturday?”

  “Yes, of course we are. I meant days off from manning the shops,” I said. “Four whole days, and when we come back Monday morning, we’ll have an honest-to-goodness full-service coffeehouse.” I felt decadent. I hadn’t taken more than a day off since I’d opened The Naked Bean, other than the month after Matt was born, and I’d hardly call that a vacation.

  “We should’ve done this two years ago.” Ingrid bent to pick up Bob, who’d settled happily in Matt’s lap. Matt was gently stroking Bob’s head, like Ingrid had taught him.

  “We’re doing it now, and that’s what—” I frowned at my son, who held Bob tight, turning so Ingrid couldn’t get him. “Matt, let Ingrid have Bob.”

  “Bob stay with us tonight.”

  Thinking of the last time Bob had “slept over” at our house and the puddles I’d had to clean up, I sighed and knelt beside Matt. “Bob is much happier with Ingie.” I pried the Chihuahua from Matt’s chubby little fingers and handed him to Ingrid.

  Matt didn’t cry. He rarely cried. But the look he gave me could’ve melted Colchick Mountain.

  I raised my brow at him, and he looked away.

  “The boy wants a dog, Jayne,” Ingrid said.

  I stood, “And I want a million dollars to pay for this renovation.”

  She stuck her chin in the air. “A boy needs a dog.”

  “He has a cat.”

  Ingrid “humpfed” again. “Not the same thing.”

  “Thank God,” I murmured as I locked the door behind her.

  The world is roughly divided into two pet camps: cats and dogs. True, a small percentage of the population opts for more exotic pets like snakes or ferrets or parrots, but by and large, it’s a race between cats and dogs.

  I’d always been firmly in the cat camp. My husband, Matthew, had shown dog tendencies early in our relationship, and little Matt had obviously inherited his father’s dog-lovin’ genes.

  Well, I had set his father straight. I could do the same for my son.

  I bent and picked him up. “Come on, little darlin’. Let’s go upstairs and fix our supper.”

  ooo

  The next afternoon, I stood in the gaping hole between The Naked Bean and the bakery. It was about six feet wide, uneven and ugly. On either side, it showed an old brick wall that had been sandwiched between two-by-four studs and drywall. In places, I could see down to the basement and up to the attic.

  Dan’s crew had hung heavy plastic from the ceiling on both sides to keep the dust to a minimum. Even so, dust had crept through to coat the tables in both the coffeehouse and the bakery.

  “It’ll look better tomorrow evening,” Dan said, a bit defensively.

  I smiled into his square-
jawed face. “I know. It’s just that telling yourself there’s going to be a mess is one thing. Confronting the mess is quite another.”

  “How’s it going?”

  I turned as my good friend and psychic advisor, Josie Rutherford, pushed through a seam in the plastic wall.

  “Wow,” she exclaimed as she looked at the same gaping hole I saw. “This is great.”

  I chuckled at Dan. “I guess beauty is in the eye of the decorator.”

  “It’ll look completely different this time tomorrow,” she said. “Right, Dan?”

  I chuckled again. “Is there an echo in here?”

  Dan chuckled, too, and gathered his tools. His two workmen had already gone for the day. “I’ll see you early in the morning.”

  “All right,” I said, and saw him to the door. Then I turned to see Josie watching me like a mother robin watches her babies returning from their first flight. “What?”

  “Did I see a spark between you and Dan?” she asked with what could only be excitement.

  “Me and Dan? A spark?” I blinked in startled surprise, then recovered. “I sure hope not. All this dust would go up like kindling.”

  “You sure? He’s verryy good-looking, and that workman’s body . . .” She sucked in a rapid breath. “Oooh la la.”

  I laughed out loud. “Oooh la la??? What are you, French today?”

  “Harry says when I kiss I’m Fr—”

  “Hey hey hey! Keep it clean.” I pointed to the other side of the plastic curtain where Matt was drawing pictures of houses in the dust.

  Josie studied me for a long moment, then said, “You’re not worried about Matt. You’re jealous.”

  “And you’re nuts.” I briskly pushed my way through the plastic. “Dan? The hunk who every single—and some not so single—women in town pants over? That Dan?”

  Josie rolled her eyes as she followed me. “Yes, that Dan. And he is a hunk, isn’t he?”

  I shook my head at her. It seemed as if everybody in town had tried to pair me up with Mossy Creek Police Chief Amos Royden, and both he and I had taken that in stride. But Dan McNeil had never crossed my mind. Dan. Hmmm. He did have very nice . . . shoulders—