The Old Buzzard Had It Coming (18 page)

Alafair thought about this briefly. “You mean somebody’s made a fire within the last few hours,” she observed.

He looked up at her. “Had to have. Looks like somebody’s got himself a still.” He looked back down. “I wouldn’t care if one of Daddy’s ne’er-do-well friends dismantled this thing and hauled it off, but I don’t like the idea of somebody doing this on our property.”

“If I was a thief and a bootlegger,” Alafair told him, “I might think there was advantages to doing my business where somebody else besides me could get blamed if it was found out.”

John Lee made a “humph” sound, then fell silent for a time, pondering the implications of this discovery.

“What do you think?” Alafair asked him, at length.

“I think I’d better come out here a few nights with the shotgun and catch this fellow,” John Lee stated.

Alafair put her hand on his shoulder. “John Lee, don’t you think you’d do better to turn this information over to the sheriff and let him pursue it?”

John Lee stood up. “No, ma’am, with all due respect, I don’t. The sheriff has got his killer, or so he thinks. If I don’t present him with the answer writ in stone, I don’t see why he’d think it worth his time to mess with it.”

Alafair glanced up at the light spot in the clouds that indicated the position of the sun. “I’ve got to get home and start dinner for Shaw,” she said nervously, “but I really want to talk about this some more before you do something rash. What if this person is the killer? What does he have to lose by shooting you? Or maybe worse, what if you end up having to shoot him and then end up being the killer you’re trying to prove you’re not? Please don’t do anything until we can get together again and plan this out. Maybe tomorrow….”

“Miz Tucker,” John Lee interrupted. “I’ve got to move fast. The sheriff is taking my ma into Muskogee today to charge her with murder.”

“Please, son,” she pleaded. “We’ll get it figured out. Please promise me you won’t try to take this all on yourself.”

John Lee eyed her doubtfully. “I’ll think on it, Miz Tucker,” he finally said. “Now let me take you out of here and get you headed for home.”

Alafair opened her mouth to argue with him, but suddenly realized that this was the best she was going to get. She nodded, and followed him as he led her back through the brush to the path by the creek, all the while anxiously wondering what she was going to do next.

***

Alafair had set a stew on slow heat early that morning, and it had cooked to soupy perfection by the time Shaw got back to the house at about 12:30. Alafair baked a short batch of biscuits and fried a few slabs of bacon, creamed a quart of corn from her pantry, fried some potatoes in drippings with onion and a bit of her dried sage, sliced some onions into thick chunks, and poured a couple of glasses of buttermilk. They discussed the homely business of the day as they ate, sitting companionably at the table for a little longer than necessary when they finished, lingering over mugs of strong bitter coffee, a bit of warm apple cake with butter, and a slice or two of homemade cheese. It was close to two when Shaw went back to work, leaving Alafair to clear the table and store the leftovers for supper. She took her time over the dishes, staring out the window over the dish pan, pondering the mysteries she found herself involved with.

Things had become too complicated. She was desperately trying to protect her daughter from—well, from anything that might hurt her. In the process, she was afraid that she was keeping things from Shaw and Scott that perhaps she shouldn’t. Alafair was beginning to fear that there was no way that she could continue to keep the law from finding out that Phoebe was involved in the events that may have led to the murder of Harley Day. That little gun. Somebody was going to find out where that little gun had come from. She really hoped that Mrs. Day or whoever had used the derringer had indeed flung it into the creek, never to be seen again, because if it were found, and Shaw saw it, he would recognize it immediately. Alafair felt some dread of what Shaw would think of her if he found out she had been keeping things from him, but that was only of peripheral importance to her compared to sparing Phoebe. Also, Alafair was not fool enough to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Lee himself was not the culprit here, howsoever much she may have wished it weren’t so. She had to prove to herself most of all that he was innocent, for if he was not, then Phoebe was in for a broken heart. And that prospect horrified Alafair almost as much as the idea of the girl being in trouble with the law.

***

After dinner was cleaned up and put away, Alafair took the slop buckets out to the sties next to the barn to slop the hogs. The two yearling boars were waiting for her by the troughs as she trudged across the yard lugging the heavy pails of scraps from last night’s supper and today’s breakfast and dinner. She made soothing noises to them, under her breath, “pigpigpig,” as she tipped the buckets over the fence into the troughs, practically over the hogs’ heads as they inhaled the tasty leftovers. She added a couple of buckets of Shaw’s blend of corn and sorghum pig food from the barrel just inside the barn door, then went inside to feed the sow and piglets in their warm nursery sty. Two barn cats insinuated themselves around her ankles while she fed the sow. Her usual companion for this chore, Charlie-dog, was absent, having chosen to accompany his boy to school today.

Alafair was mildly surprised that Shaw wasn’t in the barn, or around the nearby outbuildings, as far as she could see. His favorite riding horse, Hannah, whom he had naughtily named after his fussy sister, was not in her stall, and his saddle was gone. He had more than likely ridden out to the pasture.

She stood thoughtfully watching the sow and her eight frantic pigs feed, unable to keep her mind off the problem with Phoebe. Before she knew what was happening, she found herself walking out of the barn toward the trail behind the house, heading back to the creek, back to where John Lee had taken her that morning. She didn’t have a plan. She didn’t know why she was going, even. She wasn’t at all sure she could find the still again. In fact, she was fairly certain that she couldn’t. And yet, for some reason, she had to try. She had to stand there again and see if she could garner even the merest clue to this mystery.

She was able to follow the path along the creek bank with little difficulty. She crawled through the barbed wire fence that separated the Tucker farm from the Day farm and walked beside the creek for a few minutes, past the overhung willow, until things began to look less familiar to her. She stopped walking, turned around to face the way she had come, and scanned the path and the woods for the subtle scuffs and broken twigs that would show her where to head into the brush.

As she stood silent, studying the path, Alafair heard a noise in the woods. At first, she thought it was a breeze rustling the dead leaves in the trees, but there was no breeze. Just dead calm and an oppressive cold silence. She could barely hear the gurgle of an eddy under the thin skin of ice next to the bank. She didn’t move for a few minutes, listening patiently.

There it was again. Alafair definitely heard a scuffle, like a small animal, then another brief silence. The next sound was the crunch of boots on leaves and twigs off to her left in the brush. Alafair squatted down quickly, still in the path, but now no longer readily visible in her brown coat among the bushes. The crunching became a crashing as whoever it was made his way out of the brush and toward the footpath. He was not worried about being discreet, this big-footed person. Alafair had pretty much decided that it was going to be John Lee or one of the other Days, so she was startled when a tall, scrawny, middle-aged man burst out onto the path so close that he nearly stepped on her. Alafair popped to her feet with a yelp, which was echoed by the man. His arms were full of earthenware jugs, and he came close to losing his footing and plunging headlong into the creek. Without thinking, Alafair reached out and grabbed his arm to save him a chilly dip.

“Lord have mercy!” the man exclaimed. “What the blue blazes? Who is that? Is that Alafair Tucker?”

Alafair dropped the man’s arm quickly and stepped back away from him, her heart pounding. “Jim Leonard,” she observed.

“What are you doing here on the Day farm?”

Leonard blinked his rheumy eyes at her, still reeling a bit from the fright, but apparently mostly sober. “I could ask you the same question,” he said.

There was a moment of silence as they eyed one another. Leonard knew he was caught with the goods and Alafair knew she had caught him. The question was now how to proceed.

“John Lee said he thought somebody was using his late father’s still,” Alafair opened.

Leonard glanced at the jug under his arm and shrugged. “Weren’t nobody else using it,” he noted. “Seemed like a waste.”

Alafair declined to comment. “If I was you, I think I would have moved the still off the Day property,” she said. “If John Lee catches you, he’s got a right to shoot you.”

“I doubt if’n John Lee would shoot me,” Leonard opined. “Such a mild boy.”

Alafair almost smiled. “I don’t know. He’s been in a real bad mood.”

Leonard gazed at her without comment for just a moment before replying. “I’d love to stay and jaw, Miz Tucker, but I got business.”

Alafair nodded and turned to leave, anxious to get away from him, but he quickly stepped into her path.

“Before you go,” he added, “I’d appreciate your word that you’ll keep this here little meetin’ to your own self.”

Alafair arranged her face to be the picture of calm, but her heart began beating wildly. “I don’t see as how it will come up,” she told him. “Especially if you was to dismantle this still and take it off the Day property.”

Leonard smiled unpleasantly. “Reckon I’ll just have to do that, now.”

Alafair brushed past him before he could consider some alternative action. “Good. I’m off then,” she said.

Leonard stooped to set the stone jugs down, stood up, and grabbed Alafair by the arm as she passed. She turned toward him, really alarmed now, and tried to tug away. “Mr. Leonard,” she exclaimed, “what are you doing?”

“I want to know what you’re really doing out here in the woods, now,” he growled. “Was you looking for the still? Was you looking to steal from me, Miz Tucker?”

“No, certainly not,” she assured him, aghast at the suggestion.

“Then what?” he insisted.

She blinked. “I don’t know, I don’t know, really. You know Harley Day’s wife got arrested for his murder. I just don’t think she done it. I came down here by the creek because she said she threw the gun away down here, and I was thinking maybe I’d find it.” She was talking fast, only half aware of what she was saying, concerned only with persuading Jim Leonard to let go of her arm.

Leonard’s eyebrows disappeared under the dirty blond mess of hair on his forehead. “Is that so?” he wondered, sounding amused. “Day’s wife, you say. Well, well, she had cause, I’m thinking. But it’s a fool’s errand you’re on, Miz Tucker. A pack of bloodhounds couldn’t find no little pop gun in this tangle of woods. So if I was you, I’d get gone from here and not come back no more.” With that, he let go of Alafair’s arm. She had been straining against him so hard that she nearly fell over, but she recovered and took off down the path at a run. She could hear Leonard laughing at her almost all the way to her own property.

***

Her hands were still shaking when she was standing in her own kitchen, unwinding the scarf from around her head, muttering epithets at herself for being so foolish. She was halfway across the kitchen floor when it struck her, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

“…no little pop gun…”
he had said.

She turned around and retrieved her coat and scarf on the fly as she headed back out the door.

***

I should get Shaw, Alafair kept telling herself, as she headed back toward the still. She knew she should wait a few hours to make sure that Leonard was long gone before she did this, but she didn’t have a few hours, and she was practically quaking with excitement over the possibilities that this new information raised. I shouldn’t be wishing that Jim Leonard is a murderer, she admonished herself. But truth be told, if she had to choose between Phoebe, John Lee, Mrs. Day, the Langs, junior and senior, or Jim Leonard as Harley’s killer, well, she guessed she’d choose Jim Leonard.

As she neared the clearing, she slowed down to a tip-toeing walk, listening intently. She was sweating with anxiety, in spite of the bitter cold. She crouched down low and peered through the brush for several minutes before she crawled into the open place where the little distillery was set up. There was no sign of Jim Leonard, but she expected that he would be back as soon as he had deposited the jugs he had been carrying at his own place. He was afoot when she saw him, and unless he had left a mount up by the road, it would take him close to an hour to walk home, drop his goods, and get back here.

Still, no point in dallying.

Why she thought the pistol might be hidden here, she couldn’t say. Mrs. Day had said she had thrown it into the creek, and throwing it into the creek would be the smart thing to do. However, Alafair’s derringer was a fine little gun, worth a lot of money, and it seemed to her that a person like Jim Leonard would be loathe to throw it away. And if he had shot Harley with it, Leonard would be disinclined to hide the gun on his own property when he had a perfectly good hiding place right here. And so, following her intuition with her customary faith, she launched into a search.