Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

Phoebe’s knees. One hand clutching the phantom pistol dropped down, and the other pointed into the woods. “That tree, there,” she stated. Phoebe turned to look at a scrubby oak about twenty yards from her that looked identical to all the other scrubby oaks in the grove.
    “What if I was wrong about the angle?” Phoebe wondered.
    Alafair scrambled to her feet. “We won’t know until we look, now, will we?”
    Phoebe reached the tree before her mother, and bent down to look at where Alafair had pointed. She nearly fainted when she saw it—a little pale bore in the black bark of the slender oak, right at waist height. It was too round to be natural, and it was new. Limp with amazement, she stuck her finger into the hole and felt metal at about half an inch. She laid her forehead against the tree trunk and prayed her thanks. It never occurred to her that divine guidance might not be involved. Only God could have led her to find a single bullet hole in a forest.
    She heard her mother come up behind her. “Is it there?” Alafair asked.
    “Yes, Ma, it’s here,” Phoebe said. “It’s a miracle.”
    Alafair moved her aside and knelt down to look at the hole in a businesslike manner, more sanguine about God’s intervention than Phoebe was. She nodded. “Well, girl, that’s one piece of evidence down,” she said. She picked up a rock and scored a white scar on the trunk, so that they would be able to find the tree again with ease. She looked up at Phoebe, her brown eyes full of determination. “Now we have to find that bothersome gun.”
    ***
    Alafair and Phoebe were approaching home, trudging hand in hand in grim consort against the cold. Alafair had her eyes on the ground before her feet and didn’t see Scott’s big horse tied up in front of the house until Phoebe squeezed her hand in alarm. Alafair’s steps faltered. “Now, what is he doing here this time of day?” she wondered aloud.
    They walked up the porch steps together, moving more quickly now, from anxiety. “You keep quiet, girl,” Alafair instructed in a low voice, as they approached the front door. “No use to assume anything. Just let me do any talking that needs to be done.”
    Phoebe didn’t have time to assent before they entered the house. From the front door they could see into the kitchen. They could see Scott and Shaw sitting at the kitchen table, both holding steamy mugs of coffee clutched in two hands. The men both turned and looked at the women when they came in. Alafair squeezed Phoebe’s hand as a reminder, then calmly began to unwind the wool scarf around her head and face.
    “What are you two up to, lolling around and this time of day?” she called to them.
    Shaw picked up her bantering tone. “Just not in the mood to mend harnesses,” he called back.
    Alafair and Phoebe finished peeling themselves out of their outerwear, and walked into the kitchen. Alafair sat herself down opposite her husband and his cousin. Phoebe leaned uncertainly against the cabinet.
    “Now, I might ask,” Shaw continued, “what you two were doing strolling around out in the frigid for so long?”
    “How long have you two been here?” Alafair asked.
    “Oh, just about fifteen minutes,” Scott told her. “Don’t let him give you a hard time. Shaw and me met in town and I rode back out with him. Got a little news for you.” He glanced up at Phoebe. “Seems John Lee Day marched into town a couple of hours ago, right into my office, and gave himself up.”
    Phoebe gasped, and Alafair shot her a stern glance.
    The glance that Shaw gave Scott was even sterner. “Come sit down here by your daddy, sweetheart,” he said to Phoebe, patting the chair next to him. She did as she was told in stunned silence. Shaw draped his arm over his daughter’s shoulders and looked at Alafair. “We were thinking to tell you about it,” he said to her, “so you could break the news to Phoebe, but it looks like the cat is out of the bag, now.”
    “Oh, come on, Shaw. Phoebe is hardly a baby, are you, honey?” Scott defended himself.
    “No, she’s not,” Alafair answered for her, unaware that all three of the adults were treating the poor girl exactly like the baby they were professing she was not. “Where has the boy been hiding himself?”
    “He says he’s been in the corn crib out behind the Day house. Which he ain’t,” Scott assured them. “I searched that crib, that whole farm, in fact, and I’d have seen sign if he had been sleeping