The Old Buzzard Had It Coming (20 page)

“A mule,” Shaw repeated.

Scott smiled. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. There’s mules galore. But now—now I’m thinking that two and two just might make four.”

“Here’s another two for you, if you want to make six,” Shaw told him. “Charlie-boy told us he saw Jim Leonard cutting across our property on that same Wednesday. Said he was on a mule and loaded down with saddlebags.”

“Well,” Scott said, and stood up.

“Are you going back into town?” Shaw asked his cousin, as he headed out the door.

“First I’m stopping by John Lee’s place to see if he’ll show me that still. Then I expect I’m over to the Leonards’ to arrest Jim.”

Alafair started to sit up, but Doc Addison pushed her back down and sat in the chair that Scott had vacated. “Oh, you think he’s the one who killed Harley?” she wondered. “Are you going to let Miz Day go?”

Scott shook his head. “Not so fast, Alafair. I’m suspicious of Jim Leonard, now, but I’m going to arrest him for assault, and moonshining while I’m at it. And Miz Day hasn’t unconfessed yet.” He set his hat back on his head.

“I’ll walk you out,” Shaw said. “I’ve got to drive in and pick up all those kids before they wonder what happened to me.”

“What are you going to tell them?” Alafair pressed him. “I don’t want them scared on my behalf.”

Shaw blinked and shrugged. “I’ll just tell them that you bumped your head a bit, I reckon.”

“Tell them that a jar fell off the shelf in the pantry and smacked me. Then I fell and struck my jaw. That sounds reasonable.”

“I’ll do it,” Shaw said with a laugh. “Doc, can you stay with Alafair until we get back?”

“Be glad to,” the doctor assured him.

After the men had left, Alafair looked over at the doctor, who was sitting with his arms folded across the chest of his neatly pressed black wool suit, gazing at her with a wry look in his blue eyes.

“He’ll be gone at least an hour, Doc,” Alafair told him. “You don’t have to baby-sit me.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Doc Addison assured her. “Otherwise who knows what mischief you’ll be getting into next.”

Alafair emitted an exasperated puff, and shifted a little in the bed. “Well, then, you might as well help yourself to a glass of buttermilk and a chunk of bread. There’s pie in the cabinet.”

“I’m fine. Do you need something to nibble on, yourself?”

“I couldn’t eat a thing. Stomach’s still unsteady.”

Dr. Addison helped her take the headache powder, and a companionable silence fell for some minutes. The doctor reached into his bag and pulled out a book, and Alafair stared at the ceiling.

“How’s Miz Doc?” she asked, at length.

“Ann is fine. Busy as a bee.”

Alafair made an interested noise, and then asked the question she really had in mind. “Doc, I’m worried about that child I saw in the woods. It’s colder than all get-out, and he wasn’t hardly dressed to speak of. He looked familiar to me, but I’d swear I haven’t seen him before.”

Doc Addison lowered the book into his lap. “Did he seem ragged or ill-cared for?”

“No, not a bit of it,” she confessed.

“Well, he probably belongs around here somewhere. You know youngsters hardly feel the cold. He may have been running home when he came across you. What did he look like?”

“Eight or nine years old, I’m guessing. Smallish for his age, but healthy. Had a head full of black curls. Rosy-fair cheeks and freckles on his nose. Big green eyes.”

“But for the green eyes, he sounds like Gee Dub when he was that age,” Addison observed.

Alafair considered this. “Why, yes, he does! That’s probably why he looked familiar to me. There was something about him. I wish I knew who he was. I wish I knew he was home safe.”

“I wish you’d stop worrying,” Doc Addison admonished. “It doesn’t sound to me like he was in any distress. He’s probably just some boy from around here whom you haven’t seen since he was a baby. You have children enough of your own without worrying about some young stray.”

Alafair didn’t reply, chastened. But she wondered about him still.

***

The four older girls took turns staying home to run the house while Alafair recuperated none too graciously from her bump on the head. The inactivity galled her, so she kept as busy as she could with sewing and mending. The girls knew her routine as well as she did, and they were all meticulously well-trained, and even talented, cooks and housekeepers. No direction was necessary. Alafair was proud of her daughters, and gratified to see what competent women they had become. Alafair had graduated from her bed to a rocker in the parlor, and was watching through the kitchen door as Mary cooked dinner.

Mary was an inspired cook, a deft hand with herbs and spices and a canny creator of sauces, always willing to go to some trouble to create a dish.

Today, though, on the third morning, before dinner, Mary was making a pie from the pecans that Alafair had cracked earlier in the week, and she seemed to have no desire to deviate from her mother’s recipe. Why mess with perfection, after all? Alafair watched her with interest as she beat the eggs until they were lemony yellow, then stirred in the dark corn syrup, sugar, butter, a bit of vanilla, a dash of salt, and a cup of the prettiest pecan halves she could find in Alafair’s batch. She poured the mix into her pie shells and slid the pies into the oven, then turned to slicing the meat loaf that she had left to cool a little on the back of the stove.

“I wish you girls were home all the time,” Alafair observed to Mary. “I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”

Mary wiped her hands on a dishcloth and shot her mother an ironic glance. “Well, Ma, I thought you said we were all the laziest girls ever born,” she said.

“I may have to revise my opinion,” she admitted. “I suppose you’ll do in a pinch.”

Mary slid a pan full of biscuits into the oven. “You mean to say you think we’re no longer lazier than Uncle Ed?”

Alafair puffed a laugh. The legendary Uncle Ed—which grandparent’s uncle he had been wasn’t entirely clear—was the family paragon of laziness to which all laziness aspired. “The one time his mama ever asked Uncle Ed to do dishes, he tried to drown himself in the dishwater. Y’all do better than that.”

“High praise indeed,” Mary conceded. She straightened to peer out the kitchen window. “Here comes Daddy,” she told her mother, “and John Lee Day is with him.”

“I’ll swan!” Alafair stood up and walked over to open the front door. “Just in time for dinner, John Lee,” she called, as the two men walked onto the porch and into the house.

“Thank you, Miz Tucker,” John Lee responded. “I’d admire some dinner, if you’ve enough.”

“Always enough for company,” Alafair said. “Isn’t that so, Mary?”

“Always enough for an army, Ma,” Mary assured her.

***

After grace was said and they were passing around the meat loaf, Alafair asked John Lee for an update on the murder investigation.

“Well, since the sheriff found the gun at the still and arrested Jim Leonard,” John Lee told her, “he’s finally gotten my ma to take back her confession.”

“That’s good news,” Alafair said. “Did he get the judge to drop the charges?”

“It don’t seem to be that easy,” Shaw interjected. “Scott’s got to submit some kind of evidence that she couldn’t have done it in spite of her recant, which he will. Seems he told her he found the gun, and in spite of her insisting that she had stashed it and lied about throwing it in the creek, she wasn’t able to tell him where it was hidden. Once he told her that John Lee was no longer the likeliest suspect, she admitted that she had confessed to protect him.” He paused to ladle an enormous spoonful of gravy over the mashed potatoes on his plate. “Scott thinks she’s still pretty chary, and might withdraw her withdrawal at the drop of a hat.”

“Did he tell her that he’s looking at Jim Leonard now?” Alafair wondered.

“No,” said John Lee, “nor did he ever tell her where he found the gun.”

“I’m thinking he’s really suspicious of Jim Leonard, now,” Shaw went on. “He told me that Jim admitted that he had had a fight with Harley on Wednesday afternoon. Seems Harley caught Jim stealing hooch from him, and they got into it down there by the creek, rolling around on the ground and whomping on each other for a spell. Jim says he went on home then, and that night Harley showed up at his place on his mule, still looking to fight. His story is that Harley was so drunk he couldn’t stand, so Jim poked him in the eye, and Harley staggered on home. Forgot all about the mule, he says, so Jim just commandeered it to haul a load of jugs back to his place. That’s when Lang saw him. I’m guessing that’s around when Charlie saw him on the creek path back of the house, too. Jim told Scott he kept the mule in his barn for a spell, but then let it go on the road on Sunday. Seems he got afraid of being accused of rustling.”

“Now he’s like to be accused of murder,” Mary noted.

“Looks suspicious,” Shaw agreed.

“What does Jim say about the gun?” Alafair wondered.

John Lee shrugged. “He says he don’t know nothing about it.”

“I expect he would say that,” Alafair said. “Seems odd to me, though, that he didn’t at least move that gun from where I had found it.”

“How would he know that you had found it?” Mary wondered.

Alafair looked over at Mary, struck dumb for an instant. She had forgotten that the kids didn’t know the whole story of her misadventure by the creek. As far as they were concerned, her bump on the head came from a jar of canned tomatoes. “Well, as I told your daddy,” she finally improvised, “I could have sworn I saw him peeking at me through the trees after I put the gun back in the jar.”

Shaw bit his lip to keep from laughing at Alafair’s close call, but Mary’s suspicions weren’t raised. “If that’s so,” Mary offered, “maybe he got scared when he saw you and ran away. Could be he planned to come back, but the sheriff beat him to it.”

“That sounds logical,” Shaw said. “Also, I think we have to agree that Jim Leonard isn’t much in the genius department.”

Alafair laughed. “Maybe not. My goodness, Mary, look at all this food you made. We’re going to have a bushel of leftovers. John Lee, I guess you’ll have to do us a favor and tote all this back home to Naomi. Maybe she can put it to some use.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a stricken look pass over Shaw’s face. He loved meat loaf sandwiches. She made a mental note to cook another meat loaf for supper.

Chapter Fourteen

Later that very afternoon, Mary drove Alafair into town for an outing. The weather had improved immeasurably in the previous few days, becoming fresh and chilly, breezily promising a change of season. Alafair’s inactivity was becoming tedious, and she accepted with alacrity when Mary suggested a trip to the mercantile. The fine, crisp weather was so refreshing that Mary steered the horse and rig on a long, looping detour around to the north of town, passing almost within sight of the Francis Brickworks. They could smell the dry adobe scent of the kilns as they crossed the railroad tracks and the narrow bridge across Cloud Creek. They were passing a small farm with a straight, shrub-lined drive.

“Ain’t that the Millar farm?” Alafair asked Mary.

The unexpected question caused Mary to peer sidelong at her mother. “I don’t know,” Mary told her. “The only Millars I know are a couple of little kids in Miss Trompler’s elementary class at school.”

“This is their farm,” Alafair informed her. “Turn up the drive, sugar. Let’s make a call on Miz Millar. No need to look at me like I’ve gone tetched in the head,” she added with a laugh. “Zorah Millar is John Lee’s aunt. John Lee came up here the day they found Harley dead and got his aunt to drive over to their farm and pick up his brothers and sisters and keep them a while. I remember that he said his aunt didn’t seem very surprised. I met her at the Day place when I went to call on Miz Day after Harley died. I haven’t spoken to her about this business since then. I wonder what she thinks about all these goings on?”

Mary’s mouth quirked ironically, but she didn’t argue and turned the horse up the drive. Alafair wasn’t quite sure herself why she felt the need to speak to Mrs. Millar again. What the woman could tell her that might be of interest, Alafair didn’t know. She was simply curious to hear what Mrs. Millar had to say about the way things were turning out.

The Millar farm was as small as the Day farm, but otherwise bore no resemblance to that pathetic scrap. The house was well-kept. At the side of the yard, a large, fallow truck garden lay encircled by a white fence.

As was polite, when they grew near, Mary called out, “Hello the house!”

Zorah Millar came out on the porch to greet them. She looked pleasant enough as she came down the steps. Curious.

“Morning, Miz Tucker,” she opened. “What brings you hereabouts on a chilly day like today?”

Alafair was a little surprised that the woman remembered her name. But then it was hard to be incognito in Boynton.

“Hello, Miz Millar,” Alafair responded. “This here is my daughter Mary. Forgive us for busting in on you all unannounced. I hope you’re not in the middle of something.”

“Nothing I wouldn’t rather put off ’til later,” Zorah assured her. “Come on in out of the blow.”

The small house was warm and smelled of bacon and bread. Zorah ensconced them on a cozy, quilt-covered settee. “I was just making myself some coffee,” she said, as she untied her apron. “Will y’all take a cup with me?”

“We can’t stay but a tick,” Alafair told her. “Don’t want to put you out.”

“Now, Miz Tucker,” Zorah chided, “it ain’t a bit of trouble. Besides, this girl looks froze.”

Mary laughed. Her fair skin flushed easily, and at the moment, her cheeks were an alarming red from the brisk trot in the chilly wind. “I wouldn’t mind a cup, Miz Millar,” she admitted.

Zorah scuttled into the kitchen, but was still in plain sight through the door as she poured the mugs full of hot coffee. “Y’all take cream? Sugar?”

“Cream,” the two women said in unison, and Mary added, “two sugars.”

Zorah brought out the coffee on a wooden tray and Alafair took a mug. She had to admit that the creamy hot liquid sliding down her throat was entirely welcome.

“This is mighty good of you, Miz Millar,” Alafair said, “considering my bad manners dropping in like this. It’s just that I felt the need to commiserate with you about the investigation into the death of your brother….”

She had intended to say more, but the sudden change of expression on Zorah’s face when she mentioned Harley gave her pause.

Zorah noted her surprise and gave a cynical snort. “There ain’t no need to commiserate about Harley on my part, Miz Tucker,” Zorah stated. “I made my feelings about Harley clear enough, I think, when you and me first met. He may have been my own flesh and blood, but if there was any critter on earth that deserved to get shot and die, it was Harley. And I ain’t going to apologize for thinking so, neither.”

Alafair and Mary exchanged a glance. “I’m not inclined to disagree with you,” Alafair resumed. “I just expected that you have been troubled of late that the sheriff threw both John Lee and his mother in jail on suspicion of killing the reprobate.”

Zorah nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “That surely did fret me at the time, but I hear now that Sheriff Tucker has arrested Jim Leonard. I’m expecting he’ll let my sister-in-law go directly. I don’t know what she was thinking, confessing to killing Harley, when I know she didn’t do it. Stupid to ruin what’s left of her life for the likes of him.” Her sharp blue-green eyes examined Alafair’s bruises critically for a second before she continued. “My sister-in-law says y’all have been good to her through all this. I heard what happened to you over by Harley’s still,” she acknowledged. “I was sorry for it.”

“Turned out to be nothing serious,” Alafair said. “I’m getting a long layabout while my girls take good care of me.” She patted Mary’s knee. “It was worth it, though, if it helps clear John Lee and Miz Day. We’ve taken quite a shine to the Days, especially John Lee.”

“And you’re wondering if I know anything else that could prove beyond doubt that he’s innocent of the deed,” Zorah added, at last enlightened as to the reason for Alafair’s unexpected visit.

“That’s the nail on the head,” Alafair confessed.

Zorah put her mug down on the side table and leaned back in her chair. She crossed her arms over her chest and regarded Alafair thoughtfully before she answered. “It’s kind of you to be concerned about John Lee,” she noted. “I don’t think he done it, and I don’t think his ma done it, but I can’t give you any facts to prove it either way. Sheriff Tucker already asked me about the morning John Lee showed up out here to ask me to get the kids, and I told him all I know. John Lee seemed pretty flibber-flobbered, but who wouldn’t be? He just said his daddy had froze to death. I didn’t know ’til later that Harley was shot. John Lee has always been a good boy—he’s the only reason that family has been able to keep body and soul together, to my thinking. I can’t imagine that he did it, but even if he did I wouldn’t blame him at all. Harley was worthless.”

“Is any life so worthless that it deserves snuffing out just like that?” Alafair wondered.

“Oh, yes,” Zorah said. “Harley’s was. I’m shocking y’all, I can tell.” She stood up, fussed around a little bit with the cream and sugar on the side table, and sat down again. “Yes, I’d have done him in myself, if the opportunity had ariz, and gone on about my business without blinking an eye. Did the sheriff ever tell you how Harley harassed me and J.D. after he lost out on Daddy’s will, and put my kids in danger?”

“Why, no, he never did. You said a while back that Harley had threatened to do you harm. Did he actually try to do it?”

“Yes, he did. It was bad at first. Mean things kept happening around here. Rat poison got in the cow’s feed. Made her dreadful sick. Her milk was off for days. The barn door and the gate to the corral or the chicken coop kept getting opened in the middle of the night, and animals would wander all over and we never found some of them again. A dead dog got throwed down the well. One of our plow mules got hamstrung—that was real bad. We kept calling the sheriff, and he kept going out to Harley’s to talk to him; threaten him, finally, I think. But we couldn’t really prove it was Harley doing it, and he denied it. Finally, my boy Doyle come running home from school one day white as a sheet, telling me that somebody tried to grab him in the woods.

“That was about all we could take, Miz Tucker. J.D. grabbed up his shotgun and rode over there black as a tornado. I was scared out of my wits that he’d shoot Harley, not that I’d have cared about Harley, but I didn’t want J.D. to get in trouble. I begged him not to go, but he wasn’t in any mood to hear. Finally, he came back home in a much better state, and said that he’d told Harley he’d shoot him if anything else happened on our property. That was the end of it, then. Harley started drinking too much of his own liquor not too long after that, and probably couldn’t think straight enough to do mischief, anyway. The last time I ever saw Harley was about a week or so before they found him dead. He showed up here one night about supper time, drunk as a lord, pounding on the front door and cussing at us. J.D. just shooed him off like a stray dog, and he went staggering back toward home.”

She paused in her narrative and heaved a sigh. “How does somebody get like that, I wonder,” she continued thoughtfully. “Harley just had to blame everybody in the world but himself for his troubles. How he tortured his poor wife! He never beat on the kids much, that I know of, anyway, but he made their lives miserable. Why, my niece Maggie Ellen was so scared of him that I give her the means to protect herself. She asked me for money to get away from him, and I gave her what little money I could. She wanted to take some of the kids with her, or at least Naomi, and I didn’t give her enough for that. So I guess she got out while she could. I hear she’s in Okmulgee now. Maybe I’ll go look her up, now that Harley is out of the way.”

“Well, I never thought much of Harley, either,” Alafair told her, “but I didn’t know he was that horrible, or we’d have done more to help the family.”

“I blame the drink. He liked to make his own brew even before Oklahoma went into the Union as a dry state. Harley wasn’t always a devil, though it’s hard to remember that after all these years. He was always full of blow and bluster and had a kind of a mean sense of humor, but he was a good enough brother. He seemed besotted with my sister-in-law, and he was a good provider at first. He asked her pa for her, and her pa let him take her, though I surely thought she was too young. She didn’t seem to mind. Harley had the bluest eyes. She liked that.”

Alafair smiled. She thought those were the first good words she had ever heard anyone utter about the unfortunate Harley Day.

***

As they drove back out onto the road to resume their trip to Boynton, Alafair broke the thoughtful silence. “I heard that Harley and J.D. was feuding, but I never realized how bad it was. Did you notice that Miz Millar said that the last time she saw Harley was a week before he was found?”

“He showed up drunk,” Mary remembered.

“A week before he was found is about the time he was shot, you know. Miz Millar did say her husband had threatened to kill Harley if he ever showed up at their place again.” She paused, thinking, then resumed. “If I remember right, her husband was supposed to be home from a business trip the next day, but never made it until a day later.”

“Ma, it looks like Jim Leonard killed Mr. Day,” Mary pointed out. “Why is that not good enough for you?”

“Something just ain’t right, honey. It just ain’t right.”

“What did Miz Millar mean when she said she heard what happened to you at Harley’s still?” Mary asked, out of the blue. “Is there something you didn’t tell us about that shiner?”

Caught. Alafair shot Mary a glance and sighed. “Well, I guess I’ve got to ’fess up,” she said. “Jim Leonard caught me snooping around the still and socked me in the jaw. I fell and bumped my head and Jim run off, probably scared, like you thought. But I didn’t want to scare you kids so I concocted a story. I’m sorry I lied to you, and I hope you won’t take my lapse as permission to do your own lying in the future.”

Mary pondered this information for a moment before commenting. “Well, Ma, I don’t know whether to be amused or insulted, but I think I’m leaning toward insulted. Do you think we’re so tender we can’t be told the unpleasant truth?”

“I’m well chastised,” Alafair admitted. “It’s not so much that I think you older kids need protecting, but I don’t want the young ones alarmed for no good reason. The ugliness of the world will make itself known to them soon enough.”

“I’m glad Jim Leonard is in jail,” Mary observed.

“You won’t tell the young’uns what happened?” Alafair hoped.

Mary snapped the reins and gave an exasperated laugh. “No, Ma,” she said.

***

Though her bumped head was mostly healed by now, Alafair used it as an excuse not to go with Mary to the Boynton Mercantile Company to shop for the few supplies that she needed. “Drop me off at Josie’s,” she instructed.

Josie saw her coming and was standing in the open door when Alafair reached the bottom of the porch steps. “Come on in here, girl,” Josie invited. “You’re just in time. I just this minute took four loaves of bread out of the oven. I’ll make a pot of tea and we can test a loaf.”

By the time she had hung up her coat and sat down at the kitchen table, Josie had sliced a still-steaming loaf and set out a slab of butter and a pot of sorghum.

“I’ve got a jar of those pear preserves from last fall that I opened yesterday, if you’d like some of that,” Josie told her.

Alafair considered this seriously. “I think I’m partial to the sorghum today, thank you,” she decided.