Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

something, Alafair?”
    Alafair looked over at Scott, but gathered her thoughts before she answered. The cat was pretty much going to be out of the bag after this. “Well, truth is, somebody hit it for me,” she admitted. At her side, she felt Shaw stiffen, but Scott didn’t bat an eye.
    “Any idea who?” he wondered mildly.
    “I’m afraid it was Jim Leonard.”
    “Jim Leonard!” Shaw exclaimed.
    Scott looked interested. He sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said.
    “Why on this green earth would Jim Leonard whack you on the head out in the middle of the pasture?” Shaw asked.
    Somebody had covered Alafair’s forehead with a damp cloth, and she reached up to adjust it, peering at her husband from under her hand. “It was on the Day property,” she confessed, “down by the creek. John Lee told me that his daddy and Jim Leonard had had a scrap about that still of Harley’s a few days before the killing. I asked John Lee to show me the still, and he did. We saw that somebody had been using the still recently, and I had just seen Jim Leonard on the path down there. I got to thinking that if by some chance it had been him killed Harley, that hidden place where the still is would be a good place to hide the derringer.”
    “So you went down there looking,” Scott finished for her.
    “I did.”
    “Why, that seems unlikely, Alafair,” Shaw protested. “Anybody thinking to get away with murder would be smarter to bury the gun, or throw it in the creek, like Miz Day said.”
    Alafair shrugged under her blankets. She didn’t want to say that she knew that the gun was an expensive one. They would find out soon enough. “I had a hunch,” she said.
    “And you think Leonard came upon you down there while you were looking for the pistol,” Scott interjected.
    “Well, I found the derringer, Scott. Then Jim busted in like a bull and boxed my jaw for me. I must have hit my head on a rock when I fell. Probably scared Jim silly and he ran off. He had been enjoying his own brew for a while, it seemed.”
    Shaw leaped to his feet, red faced. “That hell-blasted skunk! I’ll bash his damn head in for him.”
    Alafair clapped her hands over her ears, shocked. “Shaw! That language!”
    Shaw balled up his fists, bit his lip, and sat back down grumbling, still angry, but embarrassed to have forgotten himself so in front of his lady wife.
    Now Scott was really interested. “You don’t say! You actually found a two-shot derringer hid in the still?”
    “It was in one of the stone jars, under a little lean-to, to the side. I put it back, thinking to come and get you, but I got knocked cold instead.”
    “You could have got yourself killed,” Shaw remonstrated. “Merciful heavens, if you hadn’t managed to get back to the house you might have lain there until you froze to death and we might not have found you until spring.”
    “Well, I didn’t think I was in any danger, or I sure wouldn’t have gone,” she assured him. “But that reminds me, I did have help getting home. Some little ragamuffin of a boy came along and woke me, helped me up and set me to going in the right direction. I’ve never seen him before. Scott, did we have any new families move in around here recently? Maybe I should have recognized him, but I was kind of knocked stupid for a while. He sure looked familiar. He just ran off then, and I managed to get to where I got before Shaw found me.”
    Scott dismissed the strange boy problem with a wave of his hand. “We can worry about that later. Do you suppose that you could take me to where this still is?”
    “No, she can not,” Doc Addison interjected. He was standing in the doorway with a glass of water in one hand and his bag in the other. Who knows how long he had been standing there? They had pretty much forgotten about him. “Alafair, you’re probably not hurt very badly. He didn’t hit you hard enough to do too much damage, but that could change unless you lay right there in that bed for a day or two.”
    Alafair started to protest, but Shaw reached out and put his hand over her mouth. “She will obey, Doc,” he assured the doctor.
    “Alafair, you say John Lee knows where this still is?” Scott asked.
    Alafair removed Shaw’s hand from her mouth with her thumb and forefinger. “He does. But I imagine the gun’s gone by now, and maybe even the still.”
    “And even if the gun was still there,” Shaw added, “how could you be sure Jim Leonard is the one who put it