Trouble on Main Street
Sugar Mountain Book 1
Kirsten Fullmer
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Copyright © 2020 by Augustine Press All rights reserved.
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To all my wonderful friends and family who contributed to this story
Prologue
The little town of Sugar Mountain, North Carolina rests in the high country of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Thanks to the beautiful scenery, secluded location, and four changing seasons, the area is a cherished tourist destination.
Historians note that the first European settlers came to the area in 1775. During the Civil War the mountains of North Carolina often witnessed fierce guerrilla warfare between Confederate and pro-Union troops. Families sought safety in the cliffs around Sugar Mountain, which became a local refuge from the fighting.
What historians don’t know is that the sleepy hamlet of Sugar Mountain harbors a secret society of women. Don’t misunderstand—the society itself is not secret—it’s the true nature of the group that is the hush-hush.
The Sugar Mountain Ladies Historical Society was founded in 1917, when the women’s suffrage movement was gaining popularity. Most of the women were concerned more about having a voice in the community than politics in general, and they believed that their power lay with unity and cooperation as much as it did the ballot box. Fearing retribution and violence (the dreadful response to suffragettes), the ladies of Sugar Mountain created their association under a guise of a socially acceptable Ladies Historical Society.
To this day the society meets once a week in the beautiful Victorian home at 111 North Main Street, which is passed down from one grand master of the group to the next. The home currently belongs to grand master Heidi Collinsworth.
Twice yearly the group performs a historical reenactment play, but due to the women’s all-consuming community involvement, the productions are hastily thrown together and a great source of amusement to the community. Therefore, the citizens of Sugar Mountain don’t pay much mind to the ladies of the society, giving the women freedom to nose about and do their thing.
Chapter One
Heidi Collinsworth grabbed an empty bag from the hook on the wall and headed out to the mail drop box. The sun hadn’t been up long but its warming rays shone down on Main Street, spreading long shadows and waking the birds in the budding trees. Under the trees, early blooming daffodils and tulips opened into the sunshine, filling the overflowing flowerboxes with color. Windows in the second stories of the timeless brick buildings winked and sparked in the morning light.
Always concerned about the schedule, Heidi shrugged off the sight and hurried to open the back of the big blue mail box. She tugged out the bag of mail and replaced it with the empty one, then locked the box. Hefting the bag of mail up over her shoulder, she headed back inside. Unable to help herself, she had to pause and admire the rays of sunlight stretching through the clouds over the east end of the valley, almost like walkways up into the sky.
Spring was in the air, and each day its presence spread like magic through the mellow, age-old mountains surrounding town. Soon enough it would be summer and hot as blazes, but for now the scene was idyllic.
You’d never know it now, but ten years back the town had fallen on hard times. There had been no flowers, no charming shops, no joy at all on Main Street. Most of the buildings had been vacant and derelict with broken windows and dilapidated store fronts. The neighborhoods on the north end of town had been overrun with drug houses and crimes of the desperate.
But the citizens of Sugar Mountain had rallied. Using the only the resources they had at hand, local charm and creativity, they had worked to recreate their little town into a quirky tourist attraction. Luckily, the highway came right up Main Street so it hadn’t been hard to attract folks who were heading up to Boone.
First, they’d undertaken a monumental cleanup—mending the sidewalks, painting, restoring and repairing the building—then they’d planted flowers, lots of flowers. Once the street was beautiful again, the locals opened the shops and art galleries featuring resident artists and boutiques filled with handmade items. Utilizing local resourcefulness, the pretty street now flourished with ice cream shops, salons, cafés, and street musicians.
Back in the post office, Heidi dumped the bag of letters and packages into the sorting bin. A large cardboard tube clunked onto the pile, the kind used for artwork and such. Finding any sort of package in the drop box was unusual. Most folks just dropped letters in to be mailed and came inside to mail packages so they could have them weighed and labeled. Heidi shrugged. More and more folks had meters at home to print their own labels nowadays.
She reached for the package then froze. Was that blood? She stared at the parcel for a long moment in disbelief then hurried back to the counter to tug on latex gloves. Carefully, she lifted out the tube. Turning it to inspect the smudges, her lips pressed into a thin line. It certainly looked like blood. There was one almost complete handprint along with several other smudges of reddish brown on the tube. She checked the address.
The mayor’s office? Why was the mayor getting drawings or paintings or some such at his office? Normally, he only received letters and maybe the occasional registered manila envelope. In her fifteen years as post master she hadn’t seen a tube like this come through unless a city building project was underway.
She turned the package over to check the return address—an engineering firm in Charlotte. Her brow crinkled in thought. So, she was right about the parcel and construction projects; the tube must contain blueprints. So why was it smeared with handprints?
And another thing, why was the package in the drop box in the first place? It was coming from Charlotte to Sugar Mountain. Only outgoing mail should be in the box. And the shipping ticket was cancelled which meant that the package had already been delivered.
Quickly, before she changed her mind, she got her phone and took several photos of the tube, complete with addresses. She would never tamper with the mail, she took her job as post master seriously, but there were no rules against photographing packages.
Heidi hadn’t always lived in Sugar Mountain. Her father switched jobs when Heidi was 14, moving the family from Kansas City to the mountains of North Carolina. Heidi had quickly adjusted to small town life and had thrived in the rural setting of Sugar Mountain.
By high school graduation day, she was already engaged to her sweetheart and had begun looking for work. Being a serous kind of person who cared about details and agendas, she’d figured a job with the post office would be a good fit. It had taken several weeks of civil service testing and paperwork, but by the end of summer she’d been offered a part-time rural route.
Heidi had spent the next few years filling in for other mail carriers on their days off, sick days, or vacation days, and in doing so had learned every route in the district. When she was pregnant with her son, Tyler, she’d landed her first full-time route in town. The walk had kept her healthy and active, and she’d quickly learned every name of the mail recipients on her route as well as their pets and even extended family.
Not only had Heidi given her heart and soul to the little city, she’d given her hands and hard work as well. No one in town considered themselves more a resident of Sugar Mountain than Heidi. It was no shock to any of the ladies in the Historical Society when old Sue Ellen Smith had suggested Heidi be invited to join the group. She’d been welcomed by the ladies with open
arms and had soon come to be a valued member of the society.
Just after her husband’s untimely death when Tyler was six, old Bill Bonner, the post master for nigh on fifty years, had retired and the job became Heidi’s.
Thinking back through her training on protocol for problem parcels, Heidi couldn’t think of a guideline that pertained to this situation. The parcel had no current shipping ticket; therefore, she could only re-mail it with postage due. Yet, that seemed redundant. Someone had put it back into the outgoing mail. Did they mean for it to go back to Charlotte? Should she send a notice to the courthouse? Maybe she should ask her superiors at the sort center in Boone. She placed the parcel in a plastic bag and put it on the unclaimed mail shelf.
She stepped back, regarded the parcel for a long moment, and then shrugged. Just when she thought she’d seen it all…
Even though Heidi was a structured soul and clicked along like a stopwatch most days, she was also soft on the inside, gooey and emotional. She felt things deeply across the spectrum of love and pain. Maybe that’s why she chose to surround herself with structure. Either way, the mysterious parcel had thrown a cog in her day and getting back on track would be a struggle.
She would have to bring this up at the society meeting tonight. Not only was an already mailed parcel in the outgoing box very strange, it was flat-out spooky with the blood on it.
She also wanted to know if anyone in the society had gotten wind of a building project in town.
Adam wiped his hands on a rag and frowned down at the dismembered Jeep. At this point the poor thing didn’t even resemble a vehicle, let alone a Jeep; it was more like a jumble of loose parts. But buying vintage cars and restoring them had been his plan, and this one had to be completely torn apart to make it right. So why was he upset? His gaze bounced over the workbenches and trollies that filled his three-car garage. Okay, his concerns were warranted, the place was a mess. But he knew what he was doing, pretty much, and parts had started arriving.
He tossed the rag onto a box and headed into the house. At the kitchen sink he stopped for a hand-wash. As he worked up a good lather, he acknowledged that his fingernails would never be clean again, but at least he wouldn’t be leaving greasy handprints all over the house.
He dried his hands and checked the coffeepot, pleased to find one last cup still on the warmer. With a grimace he realized he’d left his coffee mug in the garage, so he retrieved a clean one from the cupboard, promising himself that at some point he’d collect all the empty mugs around the house.
He poured a cup then took it onto the back deck and dropped into an Adirondack chair. His view of forest and mountains, hillsides and farmland, was still a surprise. He’d lived in a big city most of his life, and Sugar Mountain wasn’t big. But it wasn’t just a crossroads either. It was the kind of town where you knew most of the folks you passed on the street or knew of them anyway. Of course, at this point he was That new guy and he didn’t know much of anybody. The town was just the type of place he’d been searching for though, a place to call home.
He stretched out his long jeans-clad legs and propped his work boots on the deck rail. Fields, dots of houses, and trees stretched out past his property line then crawled up the mountains bordering the valley. Behind that mountain was another blue peak, then another, then purple peaks, then gray as far as the eye could see. When he’d viewed the house with the real-estate agent, he’d been so intent on the garage that he hadn’t realized his property was on a foothill of a mountain giving him this vantage point. It was an added bonus. Who wouldn’t love this?
He sucked in a deep breath. If he were honest with himself, which he rarely was, he’d come to terms with the fact that beyond his work and the view, he was floundering a bit. His plan had been to take the insurance money, leave his old life behind, and start completely over somewhere new. A place where memories didn’t lurk around every corner.
He hadn’t figured on the memories coming along with him.
He took a pull from the coffee mug and grimaced at the gritty, bitter brew. The taste matched his mood. He was down. He couldn’t help it, he missed his old job at the city planning office back in Charlotte. That was only natural—he’d worked there for almost fifteen years. After working multiple construction jobs through college, it had been the first job he’d taken seriously.
Then again, that job had been his downfall. That and Joanne. But no sense lamenting about it now. He’d worked his butt off there; he should be relishing the long quiet days filled with nothing to do but exactly what he wanted to do. Besides, how could he possibly miss a job that had led to losing his wife and his house?
JoAnne’s cheating had come out of the blue, that’s how stupid he’d been. Eight years of marriage right down the toilet. He’d been working night and day to support her while she got her master’s degree, and she couldn’t seem to understand that working long hours was part of the agreement. Yeah, he’d loved his job but still. She’d blamed him for not being there. She’d accused him of deserting her for his job. He’d been home every night in their bed, hadn’t he?
He slurped the acrid coffee. Yeah well, Joanne aside, he really had no one to blame but himself for what happened to the house. He’d been the one to put the soup on the stove, then get involved with work and forget about it. How could he know leaving soup on the stove for two hours would start a fire?
He clamped his eyes shut. Any idiot would know that. He ran his hand over his untrimmed mustache and goatee in frustration.
But he was still alive, he’d gotten out, he should be happy for that. And he didn’t have it bad here. Not at all. It was just strange to think that just a year ago, he’d been busy with work and a wife, and now he was alone. Completely alone.
His feet dropped from the rail. “What’s wrong with me?” he huffed, heaving himself from the chair to march back into the house.
Later that evening in the historic Victorian mansion at 111 North Main, Heidi paced the length of her living room. And it was no average living room. From the antique Persian rugs covering the gleaming hardwood floors to the molded tin ceilings and ornate chandeliers, the house was a showstopper. Throughout its long life, no one had allowed this home to fall into disrepair. Every detail of the wainscoting, every pocket door, every window, floor tile, and bathtub was original to the house. Each and every part of the place had been loved, cherished, and handed down with thoughtful care. And every grand master of the Sugar Mountain Ladies Historical Society had loved living there, Heidi included.
She loved her four-poster bed, the original high-tank toilets, the gingerbread trim on the porch, and even the way the pipes rattled. She loved the antique horsehair sofas, the hand-braided rugs, and the polished and glistening china dishes in the built-in hutch. Only the kitchen and heating and cooling had been updated, and she was thankful for that too.
Heidi didn’t often speak of the extraordinary secrets the house concealed. Those were special, unique, and almost sacred—not something to be spoken of lightly. Only the grand masters who lived there knew of the hidden passages and concealed rooms. Yet, Heidi wouldn’t have been surprised to casually lean on a wall one day, only to have it swing open revealing another tunnel or unknown corridor. The secret tunnels had been built during prohibition, and came in handy even now. By using the tunnels, the town need not know how often the group met.
The grand home stood regally on a double plot, surrounded by carefully groomed English style gardens. For over 100 years, the house with its wavy-glass, nine pane, shutter lined windows had stood guard on the first block of Main Street, watching vigilantly over the daily activities of Sugar Mountain and its residents. If houses could speak, this one would tell tales of women coming and going, shrouded in secret. It would speak of the growing community and evolving technology, births and deaths, crimes and passions—both public and clandestine.
The treasures within the house had been added lovingly through the years; the treasures included a first-edition book from Gr
eat Britain, rare china from France, monogrammed silver from Russia, and delicate sculptures from Italy. Even a Xia Dynasty vase from China graced a shelf in the library. All this and more made the home a cherished part of the community, a well-loved being in and of itself.
Usually the charm of the home held Heidi lovingly in its arms, with its history and longevity offering her peace of mind. The huge old house was a tie to the past—a true memorial of the passion and interests of Sugar Mountain’s original residents. But instead of feeling comfortable and safe, tonight her mind was on the society meeting underway upstairs in the secret attic room.
The meeting itself wasn’t the stress, she’d been the grand master of the society for years, it was the topic of discussion that had her worried. What on earth was up with that strange parcel? Thoughts of it had been beating away in the back of her mind. She needed to tell the group the details. She couldn’t cope with it alone.
She sighed and ran her fingers through her cropped hair. She needed to focus on one thing at a time. She would be introducing a new member into the society tonight and that took priority for the moment.
Heidi didn’t like to bring in someone new when a problem was on the table, but tonight it couldn’t be helped. Wasn’t that the way it went? The problems in life pop up at the least opportune times.
The doorbell rang and Heidi jumped in her skin. With one hand on her chest, she took a deep breath and collected her wits, then hurried through the entryway to get the door.
“Doorbell!” her son Tyler yelled from upstairs in his bedroom.
“Thank you!” she called back with an eyeroll, then opened the door.
Prim, young Sarah Barton stood on the ornate front porch clutching her purse to her chest. The woman was hard to miss in any crowd, and Heidi admired her beauty. The girl could have been a runway model with her long lean body and wide-set eyes. Her skin was the color of a latte, and she wore her natural hair clipped close to her head. Her eyes were bright with intelligence and her skin had a flawless healthy glow.
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