Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

by the window in her rocking chair. She sat rocking nervously, stopping occasionally to chafe her hands, as she stared down the drive toward the gate and cracked and picked out pecans into a bowl in her lap, while her mind was otherwise engaged.
    While she was at her mother-in-law’s for Sunday dinner, she had tried to talk to Scott about her conversation with Mrs. Lang, but she had been unable to make any headway with him. She was never sure if he was taking her seriously or simply humoring her when she told him of her suspicions. He did tell her that he had investigated both the Langs and the Millars, but he didn’t tell her what he had found out. She had expected him to tell her to mind her own business, but he had seemed more amused at her questions than annoyed.
    In spite of a banked fire burning in the kitchen stove, and a good coal fire going in the pot belly stove in the parlor, the house was chilly. It was February, now, and spring couldn’t come fast enough for Alafair. Winters in Oklahoma weren’t as relentless as the winters she had experienced growing up in the Arkansas mountains, but even so, the weather alternated almost day to day from false spring to arctic blast, and a body never had time to get used to one or the other. It was a wonder, she thought, that they all hadn’t died of pneumonia long ago.
    She was worried that if John Lee showed up too late, they wouldn’t have time to search the creek bank for Harley’s still, and still get back home in time for her to fix dinner without alerting Shaw that she had been out. Therefore, she was most relieved to see John Lee trudging up the drive toward the house just before eleven o’clock. She carried the bowl of cracked pecans back into the kitchen and pulled on her winter wear in time to meet him by the front gate.
    “Good morning, son,” she greeted. “You made it in good time. Have you already managed to get into town to see your mother?”
    John Lee snatched the stocking cap off of his head before he spoke to her. “Good morning, Miz Tucker. Yes, ma’am, I’ve been and gone already. Her and the sheriff’s deputy are on their way to Muskogee right now. Ma is in fairly good spirits. As long as she thinks we’re all going to be taken care of, she don’t seem very concerned with what happens to her.” They began to walk around the house and into the woods at the back of the yard, toward Phoebe’s secret access to the Day property. “I have a pretty good idea where Daddy was set up before he died,” John Lee interjected. “It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen, twenty minutes to get there. Anyway,” he continued, “I told Mama that I didn’t think she really did the deed, and that she was just helping the real culprit get away. She told me that she did do it, too, and besides she’d just as soon that this all be over and us kids can start our new lives.”
    “But you still think it wasn’t her,” Alafair said.
    He shook his head. “No, I don’t think it was. I think she just saw the opportunity to confess and make this all be over with, and she done it. I’ll tell you, ma’am, I think she’s got it in her head that this way she can make up for not standing up to him all these years and putting us kids through it.”
    “Well, that’s just crazy,” Alafair opined.
    John Lee shrugged. “That ain’t all, I’m thinkin’. I expect she really believes that I did it, and she thinks she’s protecting me, and making it up to me, as well.” He looked over at Alafair, his black eyes hard with determination. “That’s why we’ve got to find out who really done it, and quick, because I don’t want my own mother thinking I’m a killer, even if it’s of such a low critter as my father.”
    Alafair stared at him, taken aback. John Lee moved ahead of her to lead her through the trees as they neared the creek bank. The crunch of their feet on the carpet of brittle leaves was magnified by the papery rustle of the wind through the pin oak leaves that still hung on the trees. “Do you have some notion of who the culprit is, John Lee?” she asked his back, at length.
    “I have two or three notions, Miz Tucker,” he said, as he held a blackjack branch aside for her, “though they’re just guesses. Pa was such a nasty piece of work that I’m sure there are a dozen folks who would welcome the opportunity to do him in. When we got to talking about the still, it reminded me that Daddy had got in some kind of a scrape with