Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

since he was a baby. You have children enough of your own without worrying about some young stray.”
    Alafair didn’t reply, chastened. But she wondered about him still.
    ***
    The four older girls took turns staying home to run the house while Alafair recuperated none too graciously from her bump on the head. The inactivity galled her, so she kept as busy as she could with sewing and mending. The girls knew her routine as well as she did, and they were all meticulously well-trained, and even talented, cooks and housekeepers. No direction was necessary. Alafair was proud of her daughters, and gratified to see what competent women they had become. Alafair had graduated from her bed to a rocker in the parlor, and was watching through the kitchen door as Mary cooked dinner.
    Mary was an inspired cook, a deft hand with herbs and spices and a canny creator of sauces, always willing to go to some trouble to create a dish.
    Today, though, on the third morning, before dinner, Mary was making a pie from the pecans that Alafair had cracked earlier in the week, and she seemed to have no desire to deviate from her mother’s recipe. Why mess with perfection, after all? Alafair watched her with interest as she beat the eggs until they were lemony yellow, then stirred in the dark corn syrup, sugar, butter, a bit of vanilla, a dash of salt, and a cup of the prettiest pecan halves she could find in Alafair’s batch. She poured the mix into her pie shells and slid the pies into the oven, then turned to slicing the meat loaf that she had left to cool a little on the back of the stove.
    “I wish you girls were home all the time,” Alafair observed to Mary. “I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”
    Mary wiped her hands on a dishcloth and shot her mother an ironic glance. “Well, Ma, I thought you said we were all the laziest girls ever born,” she said.
    “I may have to revise my opinion,” she admitted. “I suppose you’ll do in a pinch.”
    Mary slid a pan full of biscuits into the oven. “You mean to say you think we’re no longer lazier than Uncle Ed?”
    Alafair puffed a laugh. The legendary Uncle Ed—which grandparent’s uncle he had been wasn’t entirely clear—was the family paragon of laziness to which all laziness aspired. “The one time his mama ever asked Uncle Ed to do dishes, he tried to drown himself in the dishwater. Y’all do better than that.”
    “High praise indeed,” Mary conceded. She straightened to peer out the kitchen window. “Here comes Daddy,” she told her mother, “and John Lee Day is with him.”
    “I’ll swan!” Alafair stood up and walked over to open the front door. “Just in time for dinner, John Lee,” she called, as the two men walked onto the porch and into the house.
    “Thank you, Miz Tucker,” John Lee responded. “I’d admire some dinner, if you’ve enough.”
    “Always enough for company,” Alafair said. “Isn’t that so, Mary?”
    “Always enough for an army, Ma,” Mary assured her.
    ***
    After grace was said and they were passing around the meat loaf, Alafair asked John Lee for an update on the murder investigation.
    “Well, since the sheriff found the gun at the still and arrested Jim Leonard,” John Lee told her, “he’s finally gotten my ma to take back her confession.”
    “That’s good news,” Alafair said. “Did he get the judge to drop the charges?”
    “It don’t seem to be that easy,” Shaw interjected. “Scott’s got to submit some kind of evidence that she couldn’t have done it in spite of her recant, which he will. Seems he told her he found the gun, and in spite of her insisting that she had stashed it and lied about throwing it in the creek, she wasn’t able to tell him where it was hidden. Once he told her that John Lee was no longer the likeliest suspect, she admitted that she had confessed to protect him.” He paused to ladle an enormous spoonful of gravy over the mashed potatoes on his plate. “Scott thinks she’s still pretty chary, and might withdraw her withdrawal at the drop of a hat.”
    “Did he tell her that he’s looking at Jim Leonard now?” Alafair wondered.
    “No,” said John Lee, “nor did he ever tell her where he found the gun.”
    “I’m thinking he’s really suspicious of Jim Leonard, now,” Shaw went on. “He told me that Jim admitted that he had had a fight with Harley on Wednesday afternoon. Seems Harley caught Jim stealing hooch from him, and they got into it down there by the creek,