Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

was caught with the goods and Alafair knew she had caught him. The question was now how to proceed.
    “John Lee said he thought somebody was using his late father’s still,” Alafair opened.
    Leonard glanced at the jug under his arm and shrugged. “Weren’t nobody else using it,” he noted. “Seemed like a waste.”
    Alafair declined to comment. “If I was you, I think I would have moved the still off the Day property,” she said. “If John Lee catches you, he’s got a right to shoot you.”
    “I doubt if’n John Lee would shoot me,” Leonard opined. “Such a mild boy.”
    Alafair almost smiled. “I don’t know. He’s been in a real bad mood.”
    Leonard gazed at her without comment for just a moment before replying. “I’d love to stay and jaw, Miz Tucker, but I got business.”
    Alafair nodded and turned to leave, anxious to get away from him, but he quickly stepped into her path.
    “Before you go,” he added, “I’d appreciate your word that you’ll keep this here little meetin’ to your own self.”
    Alafair arranged her face to be the picture of calm, but her heart began beating wildly. “I don’t see as how it will come up,” she told him. “Especially if you was to dismantle this still and take it off the Day property.”
    Leonard smiled unpleasantly. “Reckon I’ll just have to do that, now.”
    Alafair brushed past him before he could consider some alternative action. “Good. I’m off then,” she said.
    Leonard stooped to set the stone jugs down, stood up, and grabbed Alafair by the arm as she passed. She turned toward him, really alarmed now, and tried to tug away. “Mr. Leonard,” she exclaimed, “what are you doing?”
    “I want to know what you’re really doing out here in the woods, now,” he growled. “Was you looking for the still? Was you looking to steal from me, Miz Tucker?”
    “No, certainly not,” she assured him, aghast at the suggestion.
    “Then what?” he insisted.
    She blinked. “I don’t know, I don’t know, really. You know Harley Day’s wife got arrested for his murder. I just don’t think she done it. I came down here by the creek because she said she threw the gun away down here, and I was thinking maybe I’d find it.” She was talking fast, only half aware of what she was saying, concerned only with persuading Jim Leonard to let go of her arm.
    Leonard’s eyebrows disappeared under the dirty blond mess of hair on his forehead. “Is that so?” he wondered, sounding amused. “Day’s wife, you say. Well, well, she had cause, I’m thinking. But it’s a fool’s errand you’re on, Miz Tucker. A pack of bloodhounds couldn’t find no little pop gun in this tangle of woods. So if I was you, I’d get gone from here and not come back no more.” With that, he let go of Alafair’s arm. She had been straining against him so hard that she nearly fell over, but she recovered and took off down the path at a run. She could hear Leonard laughing at her almost all the way to her own property.
    ***
    Her hands were still shaking when she was standing in her own kitchen, unwinding the scarf from around her head, muttering epithets at herself for being so foolish. She was halfway across the kitchen floor when it struck her, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
    “…no little pop gun…” he had said.
    She turned around and retrieved her coat and scarf on the fly as she headed back out the door.
    ***
    I should get Shaw, Alafair kept telling herself, as she headed back toward the still. She knew she should wait a few hours to make sure that Leonard was long gone before she did this, but she didn’t have a few hours, and she was practically quaking with excitement over the possibilities that this new information raised. I shouldn’t be wishing that Jim Leonard is a murderer, she admonished herself. But truth be told, if she had to choose between Phoebe, John Lee, Mrs. Day, the Langs, junior and senior, or Jim Leonard as Harley’s killer, well, she guessed she’d choose Jim Leonard.
    As she neared the clearing, she slowed down to a tip-toeing walk, listening intently. She was sweating with anxiety, in spite of the bitter cold. She crouched down low and peered through the brush for several minutes before she crawled into the open place where the little distillery was set up. There was no sign of Jim Leonard, but she expected that he would be back as soon as he had deposited the jugs he had been carrying at his own place. He was afoot when she