Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

had been using since she walked in, but his face was so red now, that Alafair feared that his eyeballs might pop out and bounce around the room. “I’ll try to make arrangements with the widow, first, but if that doesn’t succeed, then I do, indeed, intend to sue, Mrs. Tucker.” He paused, then added, “I am not insensitive to the fact that Mrs. Day and her children might be facing some financial difficulty now, but I am, after all, in business. I’m sure that there will be several claims on the estate.”
    “I’m sure there will be,” Alafair agreed. She stood, unwilling to risk antagonizing Lang further. “I thank you for being so forthcoming,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your work now, and not bother you any more.”
    She moved toward the door, and Lang stood up to see her out. As she walked past him, Lang put his hand on her arm with such fleeting delicacy that she barely felt it. She looked up at him. He was smiling down on her with benign amusement.
    “I’ll tell you the truth, Mrs. Tucker,” Lang said to her. “I wasn’t exactly heartbroke when I heard that Day was dead. He was the scum of the earth, and what happened to him was only justice. That black-haired girl of his, the one who ran away, she was a friend of my son’s. Told my boy that she hated her father like sin and corruption, and from the stories I heard, I can’t say as I blame her. He was such a miserable creature that my son couldn’t stand to go out to his place after a while.”
    Since Lang gave her an opening, Alafair took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “The gossip around town is that Mr. Day beat your son,” she said.
    Lang’s eyes narrowed, but his expression didn’t alter. He didn’t exactly respond to her observation, either. “His wife and kids will be better off without him, and that’s the truth,” he said. “Whoever killed him probably had good reason. I can think of a dozen people who do. But it wasn’t me.”
    Alafair studied his face for a second before she replied. She couldn’t think of a way to ask him where his son was that night without making it sound like an accusation. “Well, I expect it wasn’t you, Mr. Lang,” she said to him, still hoping it might be him after all. “I hope you’ll understand my concern, and I wish you’d tell Sheriff Tucker about some of those dozen people who might wish Harley Day was dead.”
    His face was not quite so red now. Apparently her comment had relieved him somewhat. “I’ll do that,” he assured her.
    I’ll bet you will, now, she thought, as she stepped back out into the cold. Lang had just proven himself pretty darn acute, and now that she had informed him that she knew he was abroad and in the vicinity that night, he would make haste to give Scott what information he had before Alafair did. His story about his buggy ending up in a ditch sounded suspicious to her. Why would he even admit to being anywhere near the Day farm that night? Any reasonable person would have canceled an unnecessary trip on such an unpleasant night.
    ***
    Alafair and Shaw drove home together in the buckboard, with Alafair’s mare tied to the back and Shaw’s hounds trotting along side. Alafair was uncharacteristically quiet, Shaw noticed. After so many years together, he knew not to prod her. Her little troubled periods came and went, and sometimes he found out what they were about, and sometimes he didn’t. Instead, he chatted about this and that, new gossip he had heard from the kids, the funny stories Scott had told him, the condition and personality of one or another of their animals. He told her he might be hiring a couple of wranglers on permanently. That elicited a grunt from her. The frigid weather was always a good topic. And it was in the midst of a complaint about the weather that Alafair turned on the seat of the buckboard and gazed at Shaw with that look in her eye that told him she might deign to answer him should he ask what was bothering her.
    “Something on your mind, honey?” he asked easily.
    “This business about the Day boy is driving me out of my mind, Shaw,” she said. “I’m just so concerned that Phoebe might get a broken heart out of this. And I just have a feeling, a real strong feeling that no matter how it looks, John Lee didn’t do it.”
    An unexpected feeling of alarm rose up in Shaw’s chest at the look of determination on his wife’s face. “Now, Alafair Gunn, you be careful about getting yourself involved in a murder