Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

I’m no John D. Rockefeller, but I ain’t no Harley Day, either.”
    Alafair pushed her bowl over to the delighted Shaw, who finished the remains of her cobbler in two bites. “Shaw Tucker, I came into town to visit your sister. Are you going to hang around here and bother us for the next hour, or are you going to visit your cousin Scott like you said you were?”
    Shaw’s white grin flashed, and he stood up. “I can tell when I’m not wanted, yes, sir,” he said. “You want to ride home with me?”
    “I do. I expect I’ll need to be home by eleven-thirty, if you want a proper dinner.”
    Shaw was already pulling on his coat beside the back door. He checked his pocket watch with one arm coated and one free. “I’ll be back in an hour, then,” he said.
    “I’ll be ready,” she told the door as it swung shut behind him. She looked back at Josie with an ironic look in her eye. “I hope he thanked you for the cobbler.”
    “Many times. Mostly with his mouth full,” Josie assured her. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms comfortably over her chest. “Now, what’s up?
    “You think you know me pretty well, don’t you?” Alafair said, with a smile.
    “I do,” Josie stated.
    Alafair sighed. “Yes, you do. Josie, you ever want something to be a certain way so badly that you can’t even conceive of it being some other way?”
    Josie shot her a piercing glance. “If I’m figuring that sentence right,” she said, “I’d have to say yes. But of course, like everybody does, I’ve learned that wishing for things to be other than they are is folly.”
    “I know it,” Alafair agreed unhappily. “Tell me, Josie, do you expect that there’s still innocence in the world?”
    “That’s a strange question for somebody with as many kids as you have.”
    “I reckon I’m getting cynical in my dotage,” Alafair admitted. “Of course, you know as well as I do that kids may be innocent, but they aren’t necessarily honest, or compassionate, or good.”
    “Did one of your kids do something disappointing?”
    “I don’t know yet. Maybe.”
    Josie studied her a minute. “Here’s the way I see it. You can proceed one of two ways, if you don’t know the truth. Either you can decide the child is guilty, or that he’s innocent, and base your actions on your decision. Now, the law of this land says that a person is innocent until proven guilty. I’d hope that my own ma would give me the benefit of the doubt until all the evidence was in.”
    Alafair shrugged. “All the evidence I have right now points in a direction I don’t want to go. I know this child in my heart, and I cannot believe he would do wrong.”
    “You can’t tell me what this is about?” Josie wondered, after a moment.
    “No, I’m sorry. Not until I know for sure. I can’t conscience slandering the innocent. I’m sorry to be so infuriating.”
    Josie shook her head. “Don’t fret yourself. I’m a mother, too. I know how it is. It doesn’t matter that you raise them all just the same way, they all just go off in their own directions and there isn’t anything in God’s world that you can do about it. You just love them, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
    If Alafair had been the type to cry, she might have done it. Instead, she gazed at Josie for a long minute with a steady solemn gaze, then asked for her cobbler crust recipe.
    ***
    Alafair only had to run a matter of yards, across Second Street to Main and up two or three doors, to reach Boynton Mill and Elevator Company, owned by Mr. Russell Lang, the town’s most prosperous grain merchant. At first glance, the place looked deserted, and Alafair puffed in disappointment. But she tried the door and found it open, and she stepped in to the pleasant warmth. Lang’s office was a rather sumptuous affair, as grain merchant’s offices go. Three large, cubbyhole-filled desks stood at right angles to the door, all messy with papers but unoccupied at the moment. Lang’s imposing oak desk sat at the back of the establishment, separated from the ordinary workaday mortals by a gated wooden railing. The proprietor himself was ensconced in his place, and looked up with interest when Alafair walked in.
    Alafair was acquainted with Russell Lang, of course, since Shaw patronized his business exclusively, both to buy and sell. She knew Mrs. Lang rather well, from church and all, and liked her. As for Lang himself, she didn’t have much of an opinion. Shaw said