Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

innumerable people with a motive to kill Harley. In fact, to Alafair’s way of thinking, Harley had invited killing. But who, besides Harley’s immediate family, could have had the opportunity? Alafair had no doubt that everyone in town was speculating about the murder, and she felt a surge of frustration that she was isolated on the farm when she really wanted to be gathering information from anyone who ever knew Harley Day. Somebody had that piece of information, that one little illuminating fact that would cause the truth to dawn. It was clear enough to Alafair where to start asking questions. No one in town knew more about what was happening or what people were saying than Mrs. Fluke, the postmistress.
    After feeding John Lee, Alafair figured she had a while before Shaw returned from town, so she dashed out to the barn and saddled the small mouse-grey filly that she usually rode. Missy, the horse, was as housebound as any of the people on the place, and was quite happy at the prospect of a trip to town. She stepped lively into the cutting wind, carrying Alafair to Boynton.
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    The town of Boynton hadn’t even existed when the Tuckers had settled in the area. So many people moved into the region after the Creek Nation privatized the land that an enterprising fellow by the name of Finley laid out the town in 1902, and now, ten years later, Boynton boasted a population of close to a thousand people. There were two banks, five churches, and two schools, one for the white children and one for the colored children. The lively weekly newspaper was called the Index.
    The Francis Vitric Brick Company, located just northeast of town, and the Boynton Refining Company employed one hundred and fifty people between them. Main Street was paved with Francis’ brick. Homes in town were lighted by the Boynton Gas and Electric Company and supplied with running water by the city’s own waterworks system. There was an automobile garage and machine shop to go along with the two livery stables, as well as four general merchandise stores, three hotels, two groceries, two drug stores, a furniture store, hardware stores, grain merchants, a farm implement store, a bakery, a cotton gin, an oil well supply, and representatives of any other business or profession for which any reasonable person might find a need. For the past few years, the town had even had its own telephone exchange. And right in the middle of Main Street, in pride of place, stood the Elliot and Ober Theatre, which showed moving pictures every Saturday night.
    On the two mile trip into town, Alafair thought about John Lee huddled in the dim hay-store, wrapped in his quilts. She wished that she had taken a book out to him to relieve his boredom. But then, it was probably too dark out there to read. If indeed he could read very much. It had begun to snow again by the time Alafair got to town, another fat, wet, clinging snow like the one that had buried Harley. She rode Missy directly to the livery stable, loathe to leave the little mare hitched outside and exposed to the elements.
    Mr. Turner, the owner of S.B. Turner and Sons Livery, popped up from his desk beside the door as Alafair dismounted and squeaked open the rough wooden door.
    “Well, Alafair Tucker,” he exclaimed. “I almost didn’t recognize you under all them clothes. What are you doing out and about on a day like this?” The little grasshopper of a man had been old ever since Alafair had first known him in 1897, when they had moved to the area where Boynton would be. That had been the family’s second move in three years. Before that, they had migrated to Cherokee County from Arkansas, in 1894, when she was twenty-one years old with two baby girls and pregnant with twins. They had come out in covered wagons, with Shaw’s parents, siblings and their families, and three uncles and their extended families. They had been a wagon train unto themselves. The country had still been the Indian Territories then, and since the Tucker clan was part Cherokee, they were more welcome than most. Shaw’s stepfather and uncles had seen the land runs in the west, in the Oklahoma Territory, but had preferred this greener country to the east. They had settled on tribal land near Tahlequah at first, and had even enrolled in the Cherokee Nation, but after a couple of years, many of the Tucker clan had traded up for several beautiful wooded parcels in the newly privatized Creek Nation.
    The frisky Mr. Turner, who was a