The noise jarred my eyes open. I gasped and sat up. The luminous dial on my bedside clock told me it was two in the morning.
“Penny?” I muttered. “Did you knock something off a table?”
But the little cat was not on the foot of my bed. As I listened, heart pounding, it came again—a metallic clang like metal striking metal.
Afraid to move and afraid not to move, I swung my feet off the bed and crept to the window. Was the noise inside the house or out? It was impossible to know. What could have caused that dreadful crash?
Leaning close to the pane, I peered out, my breath making little foggy circles on the window.
Moonlight bathed the yard in silvery brightness, lighting the roofs of the well and the carriage house. In the darkness of oaks, cedars, and honeysuckle, something moved. I wiped fog off the glass and squinted at the yard. Something white and filmy drifted from the tangle of trees and bushes and seemed to float toward the carriage house. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited for the person or thing, whatever it was, to reappear, but it didn’t. Finally, the sound of my teeth clicking together made me realize I was shaking.
My neck was getting stiff and my arms had goose bumps. I flicked the curtain back across the window and retreated to the side of my bed. Vulnerable and decidedly shaken did not adequately describe my feelings. What was I doing here, alone in this house that was nearly two centuries old? Something was going on, something nefarious and mysterious, but what? Sliding my fuzzy blue robe off the rocker beside the bed, I shrugged into it, belted it, and felt under my mattress for the gun I put there last night. I brought it from Georgia, a reminder of my husband Sloan. He had insisted I take training for a concealed/carry permit. I had resisted that idea but at the moment, I was very glad Sloan won the argument. And, since my husband’s death, I always had a flashlight beside my bed on the floor, in case of power outages or other emergencies. Gun under the mattress, flashlight and cell phone by the bed, Bible on the bedside table had become a habit established after my husband died.
I tiptoed to the head of the stairs and listened. Not a sound came to my ears. Had the ethereal figure by the carriage house been the cause of the awful noise that woke me? Somehow, I couldn’t relate the loud clanging to that wispy shape which hardly seemed to touch the ground.
Step by slow step, I descended the stairs and stole cautiously to the front door. Sloan had told me never to open the door, if I were frightened. I should stay inside and let the threatening person come to me. He could be waiting in the darkness, ready to spring in or drag me out the moment the door was open.
Putting my ear to the door, I strained to hear anything unusual. All was deadly still.
What should I do? Would calling Cade be wise? Evidence relating to Uncle Javin’s murder was scanty but what little there was pointed to me. Would Cade think I was imagining things? Would he decide I was just trying to cast suspicion on someone else?
However, if I yanked open the door, shone the flashlight onto the porch, jumped back and held the gun at the ready, surely I would have the advantage. Curiosity and a rising anger at an intruder who would dare scare the daylights out of a woman alone, got the better of Sloan’s advice. I whispered, “Psalm 91 protection, Lord”, jerked the door open, and yelled, “Freeze!” The gun in my right hand and the flashlight in my left, I gazed around the porch and front yard.
The scene before me lay as serene as a Christmas card in the moonlight. And silent. Breathing hard, my gun hand shaking so that I could not possibly have hit a target, I stood there, slowly swinging my flashlight from left to right. Nothing moved. Not a sound reached my ears.
Drawing a deep breath of relief, I was about to close the door when something on the porch floor glittered in the flashlight’s beam. I bent down and picked it up — Uncle Javin’s brass knocker lay heavy and cold in my palm. It had adorned the door probably as long as the house had stood; at least, for as long as I could remember. In its place a large, ugly dent and splintered nail holes marred the beautiful wood.
Moonlight Can Be Murder, a cozy mystery by Blanche Day Manos
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