Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

house, looking happy, and Shaw returned to the tool shed, feeling torn, and put out with himself for his own curiosity, and for indulging Alafair in her little plot.
    “I’m sorry about that,” he apologized to Dan, as he sat back down at the table. “She’s got it into her head that maybe if she talks to everybody who ever knew Harley Day, she can figure out who did him in better than the sheriff can.”
    “And clear John Lee?”
    “I expect that’s the plan. Anyway, I hope you don’t take offense.”
    Dan’s complexion had cleared and he looked fairly sanguine about the whole situation as he took a bite of cornbread before responding. “I can’t hardly fault a mother for wanting to help her daughter,” he told Shaw. “I just hope she don’t think I did it, or my pa, either.” Another bite of cornbread, more chewing. His face underwent a subtle change as he pondered the death of Harley Day. “He was an awful man, though,” he mused aloud. “It was like he took pleasure in making his own daughter unhappy. It was evil the way he did that.”
    Shaw sat back in his chair and studied the mechanic as he spoke, wondering if anyone was really as he first seemed.
    ***
    When he left the tool shed an hour later, Shaw could see Alafair flitting around on the back porch, busying herself with washing out a few of the children’s clothes. He smiled to himself as he trudged toward the house. Alafair had picked a chore that would enable her to keep an eye on the shed. He braced himself for the quizzing he was in for.
    “Hello, sugar,” he greeted, as he stepped onto the porch. Alafair was already wringing out the small shirt she had been washing. She hurriedly pinned it to her makeshift clothesline that was strung across one corner of the porch, and followed him into the kitchen.
    “Y’all about finished with the harrow?” she opened.
    “Dan is just packing up the axle right now. He’s going to sharpen up another disc or two, and then I’m going to take him back into town, and pick up the kids, while I’m at it. I sure will be glad when it warms up some and the kids can get themselves back and forth by themselves.”
    Alafair knew that the kids could have managed by themselves very well if they had to, but Shaw was too tenderhearted to make them fend with the cold, so she didn’t argue with him. “I expect you’re here for some blankets and hot coffee for the trip, then,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of hot bricks for you on the stove in the parlor, too. I’ve got a bit of dinner ready. Do you think Dan would like some?”
    Shaw sat down while Alafair bustled around the kitchen retrieving dishes. “No, I asked him, but he said his mother is expecting him for dinner at her house. I’ll eat, though. I’m peckish, and Dan won’t be ready to go for a half-hour or so.”
    “Did he say anything else after I left?” Alafair asked casually, as she set a plate down in front of him.
    “About what?” he wondered, feeling perverse.
    “You know what,” she said, annoyed. “About what we were discussing when I was out there.”
    “He said he hopes you don’t think he did it.”
    Alafair poured him some coffee and began placing bowls of hot food on the table. “Well, I don’t know, Shaw,” she said. “He seems like a nice boy. I hope he didn’t do it, too. But I hope more that somebody else other than John Lee did it. Where do you suppose Dan was the night Harley was killed? I couldn’t think how to ask him. Well, I’m sure Scott did, but I might mention it to him, just the same.”
    “I wonder what Scott thinks about Dan’s connection with the Day family,” Shaw mused.
    “Do you think Scott would tell you if you asked him?”
    Shaw laughed. “No,” he assured her.
    “He sure keeps his thoughts to himself,” Alafair said, exasperated.
    “He’s not going to say anybody is guilty ’til he thinks they are. That’s a quality you want in your sheriff,” Shaw noted wryly. “When I saw him this morning, though, he did tell me that they still haven’t found a gun.” He paused to mound mashed potatoes on his plate. “It would have to be a pretty small gun, he thinks, like a little muff pistol. Most derringers, the single-shots, take a .41 caliber bullet, but every once in a while you come across one of them two or four-shots that takes a .22 bullet. Useless little gun. I think of them as the kind of gun a St. Louis society lady carries when she has to walk down the