A New Start

I’ve never started any of my books with a prologue or flashback. I’m considering this for my work-in-progress. What do you think?

The wind was wild that night, dashing spates of rain against the hardware store tucked between the grocery and bank. It hit the three men like cold, stinging needles as they stepped out of the back door and carried their heavy burden toward the creek that ran behind the store.

“Put him here, under this tree and, for goodness sake, cover him with his jacket. Old Grub was over-bearing, but he usually meant well and he…well, just cover him up,” said Leonard Drummond, banker, and esteemed citizen of Maple Grove.

“Wait a minute!” The trio halted at Cam Gibson’s whispered warning. “Somebody is under the tree.”

Drummond lifted the edge of the dirty blanket covering the sleeping man. “Why, it’s Roy Richards. He’s out cold. Whew! What a smell—he’s drunk as a skunk. We can’t put Grub here.”

“Why not?” Charlie Riggs asked, rearranging the blanket over the sleeping man.  “Roy won’t ever know. And, maybe it’ll work out for the best. Put Grub down right here and cover him up. Put that gun next to Roy. “

Neither of the other two saw Charlie slip his fingers into Grub’s shirt pocket,  pull out a piece of paper, tear off a strip,  and slide it into Roy’s pocket.  No one noticed the bushes shiver behind the tree where Roy and Grub lay, and nobody heard stealthy footsteps as someone slipped away into the darkness.

A few minutes later, the three crept back into the hardware store. They shook off the raindrops and looked at each other, the lamp light casting flickering shadows across their faces.

“Nobody will ever know what went on here tonight, right boys?” asked the banker. “We don’t know anything about a card game and we haven’t seen Grub or Roy.”

“Why would I put my own head in a noose?” growled Charlie. “I ain’t talking and none of you others better either, or I just might remember a few things that have been going on in this town that the law would be interested in knowin’.”

“Now, you just hold on there,” Cam Gibson said. “Nobody is going to talk, but we need to think this through. I believe I’d heard Roy and Grub having words, the other day. They didn’t get along at all.”

“They didn’t? I didn’t know that,” said Charlie.

“You ignoramus! ‘Course I didn’t actually hear them, but if anybody asks, we’d better say something that throws suspicion off us, if there ever is any.”

“I see,” said Charlie. “And, I understand Roy threatened him too. Seems Roy might have owed him some money.”

“All right, sit down and we’d better get our stories straight. I don’t plan to go to the gallows for something I didn’t do. Charlie, if you hadn’t been so hot-headed, none of this would have happened. You just picked a fight with old Grub on purpose, seems to me.”

Charlie shrugged and the three sat down at the table, cards, money, and empty glasses scattered across the top. Nobody looked at that one over-turned chair still lying on the floor.