Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

that she didn’t even know she was being followed, traipsing around in the freezing cold wrapped in a quilt. She’d catch pneumonia. Alafair made a mental note to force hot rose hip tea down her and wrap her feet over a hot water bottle. To wet a strip of flannel with camphor and bind it around Phoebe’s throat. She inventoried her fever medicines in her mind. Did she have enough onion and garlic in the house?
    She shook herself back to the task at hand. She could see the soddie in the middle of the stubble-field, now, and Phoebe and the dog’s ghostly forms making a beeline for it. Phoebe stopped in front of the doorless door and stooped to say something to the old yellow shepherd. Alafair quickly squatted down herself, to avoid being seen. Phoebe ducked into the soddie, leaving the dog sitting beside the door gazing after her. Alafair counted to sixty, then moved up to the shack as stealthily as she could.
    The dog saw her, of course, but knew who she was long before she drew very near. He made no noise other than a few dull thumps as his tail hit the ground when he wagged his greeting. Alafair put her hand on the dog’s head and urged him to accompany her around the side of the soddie, where one high window, unstuffed with hay, might enable her to hear what was happening inside.
    She could hear them, all right, two young voices, one female, one male, speaking softly to one another in a murmur, just below Alafair’s ability to comprehend. She anxiously pressed herself up to the wall near the window, her ears strained to the limit.
    She listened, frustrated, as the young people talked for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and then fell silent. Alafair sank down next to the house and draped her arm over the dog, feeling like she might explode. She desperately wanted to burst into the soddie, fling the two apart, and dash the boy’s brains out against the wall.
    If he cared for Phoebe, even if he only felt himself to be her friend, how dare he involve her in this nasty business? She indulged herself in her fury at John Lee for a minute, even as she was perfectly aware that there was enough guilt to go around.
    She only had to restrain herself for a couple of minutes before she heard Phoebe step out the door again and whistle softly for the dog. Alafair pushed the dog away from her before Phoebe could come around the side of the shack to look for him. The dog shook himself and walked calmly around the corner to Phoebe, with a single backward glance at Alafair, unsurprised by the inexplicable vagaries of human behavior. Alafair squeezed herself into the littlest package she could.
    “There you are, you old Charlie-dog,” Phoebe said, very plainly. “Let’s get on back.”
    When Alafair heard Phoebe’s footsteps recede, her breath escaped in one huge whoosh of relief, and not simply because she had not been discovered. Phoebe had not been alone with her fugitive friend long enough for anything untoward to have happened.
    Alafair sat still for a minute, pondering. As she saw it, she had two long-range problems. First, she had to find out what there was between Phoebe and John Lee. Second, she had to know if this boy had killed his father, and if he had, were there mitigating circumstances? Her two long-range problems were momentarily precluded by two more immediate questions. Namely, was she going to rush into the soddie and demand that the boy tell her what he thought he was up to? And if she was not going to do that, how was she going to get back into the house without alerting Phoebe?
    How long had she been away from the house? Forty-five minutes, probably. What if one of the kids had awakened and wanted her? Well, it would be a disaster, that’s all. But it was unlikely.
    Alafair rubbed her cold hands together and blew into them. She knew she wasn’t going to confront John Lee, not right now. He wasn’t going anywhere in the short run, and if she kept her counsel for a little while, she might learn something. She would have to be subtle as a summer breeze, she knew, since dealing with a wary teenager is more difficult than approaching a scared deer. And that included not just Phoebe, but all of Alafair’s older kids, as well. They might not know everything about the situation, but as sure as the sun rises, they knew more about Phoebe and John Lee than she did.
    She settled back against the grassy wall to wait a while, until Phoebe was settled back on her pallet and dozing, and Alafair could slip back through