Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

be overly broke up about the old reprobate’s passing.”
    Unwilling to speak ill of the dead, Alafair didn’t respond, but she thought Scott was probably right. More than likely it would be a great relief to Mrs. Day not to have that horrifying presence around herself or her children any more. But losing one’s husband, even such a poor specimen as Harley Day, presented another whole set of problems. Especially if one were without resources, either financial or emotional.
    Shaw pulled up in front, and Scott maneuvered his horse around to the side of the wagon. “What brings you out this way on such a sloppy day?” Shaw asked.
    Alafair leaned up against the gate and rubbed her hands together to warm them. “Old Harley Day has died,” she informed him.
    Shaw looked at Scott for confirmation, his eyebrows rising. “Is that so?” he asked.
    “It is so,” Scott told him. “I’m going over there right now, and I figure I’m going to need some help moving the body after I see what’s what.”
    “Did he get killed or what happened?”
    “His boy says they think he died of the cold when he fell down drunk outside the house.”
    The corner of Shaw’s mouth twisted up in his characteristic smirk. “Well, go along, then, and I’ll follow you in the wagon directly.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Alafair interjected, and both men looked over at her. “Miz Day will be needing some help laying out the body,” she explained, heading for the house to get her coat and wool scarf.
    Scott plopped his hat back onto his balding head. “Y’all come along as soon as you can,” he called, already cantering toward the road.
    Shaw sat chaffing his hands and stomping his feet for ten minutes, calling to his hounds, who kept leaping in and out of the back of the wagon, before Alafair reappeared, bundled to the eyes and carrying a tin pail and a towel-wrapped tin jug that Shaw fervently hoped contained hot coffee.
    He relieved her of the food and she climbed up onto the seat next to him. He snapped the reins and called to the team of mules, and they began to move as Alafair dug into her tin pail and brought out a couple of pieces of cold fried chicken. “There was a little chicken left over from yesterday, and I whipped up a couple of bean sandwiches with onion. It ain’t much, but it’ll tide us over.”
    “I’ll sure have some,” Shaw told her, “and pour me some of that coffee before my insides freeze solid.”
    Alafair pulled a mug out of the bucket and maneuvered the lid off of the jug with her mittened hands. “I’ll swear, I haven’t had one thought about the Days in a year, and all of a sudden they’re all over the place.”
    “They’re not the type of folks that one really gets friendly with,” Shaw said, between bites, “though it is odd that we never saw them kids any more than we did.”
    “I think that father of theirs kept all of them on a pretty short leash.”
    There was a pause in the conversation when they reached the road. Alafair climbed down from her perch and swung the heavy wood and wire gate closed after Shaw drove out. He pulled up in the road and waited while she dropped a piece of looped wire over the end of the gate and the terminal fence post, then hauled herself back up next to him. “I’ll tell you what I think is odd,” Shaw said, as though they had never interrupted the conversation. “For somebody that’s as much of a friend of the downtrodden as you are, I’m surprised you ain’t Miz Day’s best friend and protector.”
    Alafair knew he was twitting her a little bit, but she bristled just the same. “I tried to make friends with that woman dozens of times over the years, as you very well know, but she was having none of it.”
    “Yes, I very well know,” Shaw admitted, amused. “Now that that skunk of a husband of hers has gone on to his reward, such as it may be, she might be more willing to be neighborly.”
    Alafair shrugged. “Truth is, I always got the feeling that she’s more ashamed than unfriendly. No money, bunch of raggedy kids, an occasional black eye, if I read that situation right. I’d have helped her, if she’d have let me, but I couldn’t very well force myself on her.”
    “No, that would have shamed her,” Shaw agreed.
    “You expect that they’ll be able to stay on?” Alafair wondered anxiously. “I’m thinking the bank might foreclose on them.”
    “That’s a possibility,” Shaw admitted. “Though they won’t if there’s a