Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

“We’ve been neighbors for years, and now we may be kin before long. I think we can call each other by our first names.”
    “So do you expect that Phoebe and John Lee will get married now?” Alice asked.
    “Not right away,” Alafair assured her. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
    Alice laughed. “You always do, Mama.” She paused and gazed into the yard at Phoebe and John Lee for a moment. “They do look happy, don’t they?” she observed. “Seems funny, after all these unhappy events. Everything all mixed up together, all this sadness and horror and joy and hope for the future.”
    Alafair looked over at her daughter. “Why, that’s the way it always is, sugar,” she said. “That’s how God keeps us on our toes.”
    ***
    It was much later in the day before Alafair and Shaw and the girls began preparing for the trip home. Alafair was heading up the porch steps to take her leave of Nona Day, when Scott called her name. Alafair paused curiously and looked over at him standing at the end of the porch. He beckoned silently for her to join him.
    “What’s up?” she asked.
    Scott was leaning against the porch rail with his ankles crossed and his arms folded comfortably across his chest. He unfolded his right arm and extended it languidly in her direction, palm up. Lying in his hand was a silver plated, ebony handled derringer. “This yours?” he asked.
    Alafair could feel the blood drain from her face. She looked up at him. “What makes you think that?” she wondered.
    “Besides the fact that it has the initials AG engraved on the stock?” he asked ironically. “Seems that I remember once about a million years ago that Hattie told me you had shown her a little ebony-handled gun your daddy gave you when you were a girl.”
    Blame it all, Alafair thought. It was too hard to remember who all you had told things to over the years.
    “You know,” Scott continued, “it sure is a good thing that Jim Leonard finally confessed that he had picked up this gun in the woods, because after you told me that you had found it hidden by the still, I sure got to suspecting John Lee had something to do with it getting there.”
    Alafair swallowed, mentally girding her loins to come clean. “Do you want to know how that gun got into the woods like it did?”
    “No,” Scott said. “I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with the killing of Harley Day.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” Alafair assured him.
    “I’m also guessing that you had a real good reason for keeping information from me.”
    “Well, yes, the best of reasons, to my way of thinking.”
    “And I’m further guessing that those reasons may have had something to do with Phoebe.”
    Alafair had no answer to this. “Are you going to tell Shaw?”
    Scott shrugged. “I don’t see why. You’d better take this and put it back in a hiding place that the kids can’t find. And I don’t think we ought to consider pressing charges against Jim Leonard for stealing it. The fact that he punched you in the face will put him away for awhile.”
    Alafair took the gun from him and slipped it into her coat pocket, limp with relief. “You’re a good man, Scott Tucker,” she acknowledged.
    Scott refolded his arms across his chest and gave her a sardonic smile. “Just don’t press your luck, Alafair,” he warned.
    “Well, Scott,” she asserted, “I don’t know as luck had much to do with it.”

Epilogue
    Shaw found Alafair sitting on the stone bench he had installed next to the two little graves. The family had come to his parents’ farm to celebrate his mother’s birthday, and when Alafair had disappeared after the feast, Shaw knew within reason that she had made her way here. His stepfather had donated the land in this beautiful wood on the back section of his farm for a family cemetery when they had first come to Muskogee County almost fifteen years before. The first grave had been for Shaw’s grandfather, who was worn out by the trip. There were a dozen graves, now, including the two enclosed by a little white fence that Alafair was sitting by now.
    Shaw sat down next to her, and they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. The breeze was fairly warm. It wouldn’t be long until the wild crocuses began to bloom.
    “I wish now that we hadn’t just put ‘Baby’ on the one,” Alafair observed, at length. “I know we hadn’t gotten around to naming him official-like when he died, and I was just too sad to think