This is an excerpt from the current cozy mystery in progress, Moonlight Can Be Murder. Nettie is on the front porch of Granger Mansion watching Dink Renfroe repair the front door.
“Yep, it’s a shame that somebody damaged this here fine old wood. Know who did it?”
I perched on the porch railing the day after Pat and Jackie’s visit, watching Dink Renfroe as he worked to fill in holes and replace the brass knocker on my front door. Pat had given me the phone number of this handyman. He seemed to be doing a great job.
“No,” I said. “It was probably just someone bent on vandalism. Nothing like that has happened since.”
Spreading more rumors about Granger Mansion seemed unwise. Dink didn’t need to know about the filmy figure nor my thought that somebody was trying to scare me away.
“In all the years Javin Granger was in prison and the house was empty, I never knew of anybody harming it,” Dink said, grunting with the effort of boring a new hole for a screw.
“Want me to hold the knocker?” I asked, and when he shook his head, I continued, “It seems almost miraculous that the house just sat here, unharmed, all those years. Maybe my uncle prayed for angels to protect it.”
“Could be,” Dink said. “He was right religious. Call the electric company for a new bulb for your dusk to dawn light. What with ol’ Javin’s murder and this here vandalism, I think you need a light over here. Must get pretty dark, with all these trees around.”
“I’ll do that right away,” I agreed, “and you’re right, it does get dark when there’s no moon.”
“We had a full moon the other night,” Dink said. “Did you notice?”
Oh yes, I had noticed.
Without waiting for my answer, he continued, “Not that I’m superstitious or nothing, but, well, the full moon seems to affect people sometimes, you know? There’s an old story that on the night the Decker man died, the moon was as bright as day and, if I’m not mistaken, there was a full moon the night Javin Granger died too. Is that right?”
Swallowing a couple of times before I could answer, I said, “I hadn’t thought of it.” I didn’t know whether the moon was full on Tuesday but it was certainly bright enough to see all around the yard Thursday night.
“I knew ol’ Javin Granger,” Dink continued. “Knew him before he went to the pen too. I couldn’t figure how he would have killed that Decker man on purpose. He said it was an accident and I believed him. It was all that gossip that caused the jury to be so hard on him. Never believed none of it, myself. No, sir!”
Mr. Renfroe didn’t need any input from me. He was a man who liked to talk. All he needed was a listener, so I listened.
“And now, Javin Granger himself turned up dead here.” He shook his head. “Don’t that beat all, how sometimes one bad thing causes another? I heard my grandpa talkin’ about that young woman who lived here, maybe a hundred or so years ago. Story was she ran off with some preacher. All anybody knew was, she just disappeared. Grandpa said that some folks didn’t believe that.”
Clearing my throat, I said, “Folks like to talk. Surely, her disappearance was investigated at the time. I don’t see how Eldon Decker’s death forty years ago could be related to my uncle’s.”
Renfroe put his tools back into a zippered bag and faced me. “Don’t you, now? Think about it. Maybe somebody decided that your uncle got off too easy.”
“Too easy?” I frowned. “He wasted forty years locked away from people who knew and loved him. I hardly think that could be classified as easy.”
My handyman squinted off into the trees and rearranged a wad of tobacco in his mouth. “Well, now, to you and me that sounds pretty bad, pretty rough; but, there are others who put gettin’ even at the top of their list of reasons to wake up every mornin’.”
He stood still, as if he were listening for something or was lost in thought. A puff of wind blew through the porch. The day had taken on a grim chill.
“Do you mean the Decker men? Do you think they might have killed Uncle Javin?” I asked.
“Now, I ain’t accusin’ nobody of nothin’. I’m just saying Moe and Verm Decker are about as mean as they come. I wouldn’t put anything past them.”
“And you,” he said, ‘you be careful, now. A young gal like you livin’ out here all alone is not very sensible, if you ask me.” He waved and started down the steps.
Watching him go, I digested his conversation. He was a talkative man and calling me a “young gal” almost made up for a bad case of jitters his information gave me. The Decker bothers–I got the same impression as Dink’s: mean and vengeful. I was determined to find out whether they were responsible for my uncle’s death. I would ask directions on how to reach their house. It seemed that a trip to the Decker homestead was in my immediate future.
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