The Contraband Pipeline

By Norman F. Hewes

This is a little mystery story set in rural Vermont. Bobby gets married and then he divorces her for dealing drugs. Moving to one of the southern states, he meets a woman and falls in love. He is happy until his wife is killed in a horrific traffic accident. He returns to Vermont, intending to build a camp on a plot of land that was left him by his grandfather. Arriving, he finds that a woman he had never met before has already started building on the land. Then he is forced to take up a life of crime by his first wife while finishing the camp and living with the strange woman. A true love story with a surprise ending for all the characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Norman F. Hewes
• Release date: Mar 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310085918

Norman F. Hewes

Norman Hewes was born in the early 1930s. His parents lost everything in the Great Depression. He was nine years old before he lived in a house with interior plumbing, running water or electric lights. The house did have a lot of love in it and this is reflected in the stories he writes. During mud season he often rode to school in the back of a cattle truck. The one thing the town had was a good library. He found much enjoyment and soon read beyond his grade level. All through his youth he worked at various jobs, mowing lawns, shoveling snow and peddling papers. When old enough he worked on a dairy farm. Graduating in 1952, he worked as a bus driver for a few months. The draft soon caught up with him and he was sent to Korea. Returning home he worked as a mechanic, and then as a factory worker. In the meantime he was married and lived together with his wife on a small farm for fifty-four years of happiness. Always, any spare minute, he read fiction and when he retired in 1996, he taught himself to type. His wife helped to make his stories readable, she being in printing as a proofreader. He has continued to write, using volunteers he finds on the Internet to edit and proofread. He is now striving to post 100 stories in different mediums. Many are short stories with a few novels interspersed. He still lives within twenty miles of his birthplace just as he has all his life here in beautiful Vermont. Norm most often used “happyhugo” as the author to write his stories under and uses this for his blogspot. The Happy denotes the type of stories he writes, having a happy ending for most of his characters and trying to follow the Golden Rule of: “Do Unto Others as you would have Them Do to You.”

Book preview

The Contraband Pipeline

A Brattleboro Tale

Copyright 2012 Norman F. Hewes

Published by Norman F. Hewes as happyhugo at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Praise for The Contraband Pipeline

I’m and avid reader of yours. I have been taught not to give straight tens until deeper into the story and more familiar with the author. Bummer! You are an author and this story is very, very, good. Good Job.

—Dave

I have read and enjoyed all your stories so far. Living on a pension I cannot afford any extra fees. Thank you for all your efforts.

—Richard

I was enjoying the story until the end when Cassie turned out to be a good ‘Guy.’ I thought the good story might have gone on for awhile.

—John

[The reader apparently wanted revenge.—Author]

Good story. I’m uncomfortable with Sheri’s physical loss, yet still you created appealing characters and an interesting plot.

—Anonymous

I’m not against seeing a villain turn into a good guy in the story, but it needs to be presented more believably, as a slower process or because of something much more personally traumatic. Cassie was presented as smart and knowledgeably enough to have dealt drugs for awhile, and hard enough to walk away from a man she seemingly cared about. I was along for the ride and enjoying the story until Cassie magically turned into a good person.

—Tim

[I am still satisfied with the results and the story scored well.—Author]

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Five Years Later

Chapter One

I was packing up my personal things here in Greensboro, NC. Three days ago, I signed the papers after selling my business. I thought about doing this last year. This all changed because one month ago I received a tax notice in the mail informing me my assessment on a piece of property I owned up north had increased again.

Last year the taxes on the building lot that I owned in Brattleboro, Vermont were doubled from the previous year. The assessment was doubled also. The latest notice I just received indicated I would be paying taxes on the land and on an unfinished dwelling. This needed tending to, since I knew of no building on the land.

My decision was made and I accepted the standing offer to sell my bookstore. It took a month to finalize. I dealt in used books. Many were ones that the students at the university wanted to sell when they completed a course and which the new students needed when they signed for that particular course. It was brisk at certain times of the year. I also stocked a few rare editions and was connected to other dealers who had a better inventory.

Half my inventory was used paperbacks. Old and used, I charged half of what the book originally cost. The reader could read the book and then return it for one-half the original the cost paid for it. Example, say a book sold for ten dollars. I charged five dollars for it and if the book came back from the reader, he/she would receive two dollars and fifty cents. My inventory was stable and the reader could read four books for the cost of buying one new one. It worked and I made a good living.

I headed north one fine May morning. I was driving a two-year-old 2500 Chevy pickup. I traveled right along; cruise control pegged four miles over whatever the speed limit posted. I was two days on the road and they were long days.

It was too late for the Brattleboro town offices to be open, so I drove through West Brattleboro and up Route 9, taking the first right after the Mobil Home Park. It was three miles off Route 9 to land that was owned by my family years ago. The road was steep, the last two miles rising a thousand feet in elevation. I turned left onto Hescock Road when I was almost to the top of the hill just before I reached the Dummerston town line.

At one time my grandparents had owned land both sides of Sunset Lake Road and on Hescock Road as well. That was years ago. My father sold off most of it, but my grandfather wanted me to have some land and he had reserved two lots, one of ten acres and one of seven acres and deeded both to me. When my wife and I divorced, she ended up with the seven-acre lot on the right side of the road just across Hescock Road above the home place.

My ten-acre lot was to the left and a half-mile down an old logging road that meandered along beside a small brook. There were ledges and a steep hillside bordering the road on the opposite side. When I came to my lot, the land leveled out and there was at least five acres of flat land. Three acres dropped down to the brook. The other two acres stood on end with a promontory where you could see down the valley. You could see the town of Brattleboro seven miles to the east nestled next to the Connecticut River.

To me this lot had everything. I never planned more for it than having a camp built on the property. It was great deer hunting country and secluded. Partially open, it had enough trees spaced widely to find shade if you moved around and it had one acre open. Trees had never grown on this opening and this was where I had planned to build a camp.

Reaching the entrance, I turned onto what was the logging road. This also was a deeded right of way owned by me. It was more than that now. It had been widened since I was here last. When I came to a section that had been a muddy spot, it was filled with gravel.

A little farther on, there was a narrow section between a ledge outcropping on the right and the brook. Large boulders had been tumbled over the narrow side into the brook for a base and then large crushed stone fill had been built up to the road. This section was fifty feet long, and it had widened the road by five feet. Barely enough to get by the ledge outcropping earlier, you could easily now travel through.

The work must have been completed last year, since it didn’t look new and had gone through the winter. Therefore, this was why my assessment had doubled last year. Someone had spent a lot of money to make the road as passable as this. Now with the improvements it made my property more valuable. That didn’t bother me, but I was concerned. Who would lay out money when they didn’t own the land? What would the dwelling mentioned in my tax assessment be like when I went around the next little corner and into the opening?

I drove onto my lot. I slammed on the brakes, surprised enough to come to a stop. The building was more than a camp. It was a hipped-roof lodge and had to be twenty-four feet across the front. How deep it was, I couldn’t tell from this angle. There was a roof over the start of a porch. It came to me then that although this was livable it wasn’t finished. For one thing, it had no siding on the plywood-sheathed walls.

The yard was graveled in front of the building and it was big enough to park three vehicles. There was no car here now, so whoever lived here must be away or in town. I turned my truck around and parked on the edge of the gravel. It would be dark in a couple of hours. I had better get busy.

I climbed into the back of my truck and pushed a four-person tent out onto the ground. I found a level place between two pine trees fifty yards from the house. I popped my tent up, smoothed the floor. My air mattress needed inflating by electric pump or a person’s lungs.

I looked around and saw a line of poles with wires set back from the road that I hadn’t noticed as I drove in. Must be the closest power was at the FM tower for the local radio station that perched on a peak above the logging road. The wires had apparently been extended to here. This was another costly item and it would improve my property even more.

I went over to the house and found an outside electrical plug. In ten minutes, I carried my blown-up mattress back and put it inside the tent. I lugged a small bottle gas-fired grill from the pickup. I brought my cooler to the fire and got a steak out. I had put the meat in a plastic bag with marinade when I purchased the steak. It was a three-pound sirloin, more than I would eat tonight, but it wouldn’t waste.

I wrapped two medium-sized potatoes in tin foil and set them on the grill. When I had the steak seared, I turned the heat down and let everything cook. I opened a beer, sat in the canvas chair and waited. In fact, I dozed a bit. I did waken enough once to turn the steak and roll the potatoes over.

I split the steak and put it onto two separate plates. I would eat one piece now and eat and one piece tomorrow. Just then I heard a vehicle arriving. It paused when my truck was spotted, then it drove up in front of the building. I turned my back and bent down to get another beer out of the cooler. The car door slammed and then I heard footsteps stalking toward me.

Who the hell are you? This is private property. Pack up and get the hell out of here.

It was the day’s final light. I turned around and faced a woman dressed in camouflage. She had a cap on. I didn’t speak until after looking her over. The woman was five-seven, slim, and I couldn’t tell her shape. She was standing before me confident and arrogant.

"You are right, this is private property. You might not be aware, but I am the