Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

done it,” Scott answered grimly.
    For an instant, both Shaw and Alafair were stunned into silence by his pronouncement.
    “Now, what makes you say that?” Shaw asked.
    “Because he lied to me twice. His mama says he went to her sister-in-law’s place before he come to tell me about his father’s death, which he must have done, since she has already picked up the children. But when John Lee came to fetch me, he told me he hadn’t been to his aunt’s house yet. Said he’d be home directly after he talked to her, and he ain’t here yet. And, as I mentioned this morning, when John Lee came by the sheriff’s office this morning to tell me his daddy was dead, he was riding their mule.”

Chapter Four
    Shaw and Alafair sat together glumly on the front porch of the Day place while Dr. Addison was inside with Mrs. Day and what was left of Harley. The two girls were in there, too, which distressed Alafair, but their mother wanted them, and there was nothing Alafair could do about it. She consoled herself with the thought that the two children were apparently quite unconcerned about finding themselves fatherless. She expected that Dr. Addison made the family wait in the parlor while he conducted the preliminary examination.
    “Do you think John Lee killed the old scalawag?” Alafair asked Shaw, after a long silence.
    Shaw shrugged. “Looks bad,” he admitted, “if he lied about the mule and then run off.”
    “If he did, do you think Miz Day knows about it?”
    Shaw looked over at her. “It would seem likely,” he admitted. “She said she stood on the porch and watched Harley and John Lee chase around in the yard. She could just as likely have stood there and watched the boy put a bullet in his daddy’s head.”
    “I don’t like the sound of that,” Alafair said with a shudder. “It’s awful cold to shoot a man as he lies drunk, even if he deserves it. Of course, there was no love lost between Harley and his wife. If she watched her boy kill her man, I don’t doubt she’d do anything to protect him. I would.”
    Shaw chuckled. “I know you would. You’d defy the Lord himself to protect one of yours.”
    It was Alafair’s turn to shrug. “He’d expect me to. That’s what he put me here for.”
    “So you think John Lee did it, too?”
    “I don’t know, Shaw. I haven’t seen much of John Lee for five years. He and Phoebe used to be particular friends where they were little, and it looks like they are still. He was a nice little kid, polite and well-behaved. Biggest old brown eyes. It just doesn’t seem like he could have grown into somebody who would murder his own father.”
    “Maybe he grew into somebody who would do anything to protect his mother,” Shaw pointed out.
    “Oh, this is a terrible poser,” Alafair said. “Did the boy do the worst thing in the world for the best reason? I have to say, though, I suspect that Miz Day doesn’t know herself who killed her man. Why would she have called the sheriff if she was in on it? She seemed genuinely surprised to find a hole in the man’s head, didn’t she? If they conspired to help Harley keep his appointment with the Grim Reaper, then why didn’t they just bury the body in the woods and say that he run out on them? Nobody would have thought twice.” She leaned forward in her chair, her finger poking the air eagerly as she punctuated her argument. “And if John Lee did it, why did he go ahead on and tell Scott what had happened before he disappeared?”
    There was a flash of white teeth under Shaw’s mustache as he smiled at Alafair’s enthusiasm for justice. “It’s early days, yet, darlin’. Things may come clear all by themselves as time goes on. We don’t even know what Doc Addison has to say about all this, yet.”
    “Scott sure has his teeth into it,” Alafair observed.
    “That’s his job. You know how he is. Easy going as the day is long until an injustice needs to be righted.”
    Before Alafair could make another point, the screen creaked open and Dr. Addison came out onto the porch and walked over to them. Four doctors had set up practice in the booming town of Boynton in just the last five years, but Dr. Jasper Addison and his wife Dr. Ann had been practicing medicine around these parts since before most folks could remember. He was an imposing old fellow in his mid-seventies with flowing white hair and an equally flowing white beard. He had been doctoring since he was a surgeon’s assistant with the Union’s