by Donis Casey
“Mercy, don’t tell her that!” Alafair joked, though the comment pleased her. “Well, I’d love to stay and talk more, Nadine, but there’s chores awaitin’, and I mean to visit my sister-in-law before I head home.”
***
The women said their farewells, and Alafair stepped outside. She caught her breath at the shock of the wind, but pressed on grimly. She took a left at the corner and ran the half-block to her sister-in-law’s square white frame house, thinking about Russell Lang and wondering what the man knew. She was surprised to see Shaw’s two hounds snuffling around Josie’s yard. They trotted up to her with wags and whuffs of welcome, but she was too cold to pet them.
She rushed through the gate, picking up speed as the cold insinuated itself deeper into her bones. She didn’t stop to knock but flung the front door open and ran inside at full tilt.
“Josie!” she called through the wool swathing her face. “You here?”
Josie Cecil keeled out of the kitchen with her sails at full. Josie was a large woman, generous in every way the word could be applied. She was five years older than Shaw, and like him, a typical Tucker, with the rosy-brown complexion, the honey-hazel eyes and black hair, and the wide toothy grin that dazzled all and sundry. The selfsame grin was now warming Alafair as she felt herself enfolded in a voluminous embrace.
“Girl, you’re a block of ice!” Josie exclaimed. “Get in here and eat something this minute.” She practically carried Alafair into her big, warm kitchen. “If you’re looking for Shaw, you’ve come to the right place. Nothing’s wrong, is there?”
“No,” Alafair said, extricating herself with some regret from Josie’s grasp. Shaw stood up from the table when he saw her, a look of momentary alarm on his face turning to curious delight. Alafair smiled when she saw him. She couldn’t help herself. The sight of him always gave her a lift. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “Mr. Turner told me you were at Scott’s.”
“I came here to get fed,” Shaw told her. “How’d you get into town?”
“I rode Missy. It was fast, but I may lose some toes. I didn’t know you were here ’til I saw the dogs.”
“You’re not going anywhere ’til you try this cobbler,” Josie informed her. “I opened a quart of the peaches I canned last June. It’s still hot.” She was ladling sweet, runny peaches and crispy-gooey crust into a bowl as she spoke.
“Josie,” Alafair attempted to protest, with a laugh.
“I’ll put some cream on it,” Josie interrupted her, snatching a pitcher off the windowsill. “Put some meat on you so the cold won’t bother you so much.”
Alafair sat down next to Shaw at the table without further protest. Josie’s cooking was lore and legend, and the smell of the cobbler was making her mouth water.
“Want some more, Shaw?” Josie asked, as she set the bowl down in front of Alafair.
“Naw, I couldn’t hold any more, Josie.”
“I guess you won’t be needing any dinner, then,” Alafair teased him.
“It’s three hours ’til dinner, Alafair,” Shaw pointed out.
“Oh, well, then. Give him another bowl to tide him over, Josie,” she said. “What’s been going on with y’all?”
Josie lowered herself into a chair at the table after filling Shaw’s coffee cup. “Not much,” she admitted. “I haven’t hardly been out of the house since the snow, except to go to church on Sunday. Jack says everybody at the bank is all agog over Harley Day being killed like that. Wonder what that poor woman is going to do with all them kids and no man? Does she intend to keep the farm, you think?”
“I doubt she can,” Shaw opined. “It may be that John Lee has been working off the mortgage these last couple of years, but I imagine Harley owed the note. I’m guessing the bank will foreclose.”
Josie’s brow knit. “I think he owned the farm. Day’s daddy left it to him, and I don’t think he ever mortgaged it, according to Jack.”
Alafair was so enthralled with the cobbler that for a moment the conversation didn’t register. The heady aroma of peaches dripping with sweet heavy cream had just about knocked every sensible thought out of her. “There’s cinnamon in this crust,” she observed dreamily.
“I grated a stick over the top before I baked it,” Josie told her.
“Y’all aren’t going to start discussing recipes, are you?” Shaw exclaimed in mock horror.
“You don’t mind eating what we discuss,” Josie admonished.
Suddenly Alafair came back to earth with a wrench. “You say Day owned that ugly little farm himself?” she asked.
“I expect so,” Josie said. “Jack told me that the bank doesn’t own it.”
“So who gets it now?”
“Probably his wife,” Shaw told her. “John Lee is underage, even if he wasn’t under suspicion of murder. I can bet you money Day didn’t have a will, so it will have to go to probate court, but I don’t know why she shouldn’t get it. Even so, she’ll more than likely have to sell it to pay the taxes.”
“I hope you have things arranged so that Alafair doesn’t have to sell the farm if you get kicked in the head by a mule,” Josie interjected.
Shaw, who had been watching Alafair’s pie ecstasy out of the corner of his eye, reached over and spooned a bit from her bowl. “Of course I do,” he assured Josie, while chewing. “I even have insurance. I’m no John D. Rockefeller, but I ain’t no Harley Day, either.”
Alafair pushed her bowl over to the delighted Shaw, who finished the remains of her cobbler in two bites. “Shaw Tucker, I came into town to visit your sister. Are you going to hang around here and bother us for the next hour, or are you going to visit your cousin Scott like you said you were?”
Shaw’s white grin flashed, and he stood up. “I can tell when I’m not wanted, yes, sir,” he said. “You want to ride home with me?”
“I do. I expect I’ll need to be home by eleven-thirty, if you want a proper dinner.”
Shaw was already pulling on his coat beside the back door. He checked his pocket watch with one arm coated and one free. “I’ll be back in an hour, then,” he said.
“I’ll be ready,” she told the door as it swung shut behind him. She looked back at Josie with an ironic look in her eye. “I hope he thanked you for the cobbler.”
“Many times. Mostly with his mouth full,” Josie assured her. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms comfortably over her chest. “Now, what’s up?
“You think you know me pretty well, don’t you?” Alafair said, with a smile.
“I do,” Josie stated.
Alafair sighed. “Yes, you do. Josie, you ever want something to be a certain way so badly that you can’t even conceive of it being some other way?”
Josie shot her a piercing glance. “If I’m figuring that sentence right,” she said, “I’d have to say yes. But of course, like everybody does, I’ve learned that wishing for things to be other than they are is folly.”
“I know it,” Alafair agreed unhappily. “Tell me, Josie, do you expect that there’s still innocence in the world?”
“That’s a strange question for somebody with as many kids as you have.”
“I reckon I’m getting cynical in my dotage,” Alafair admitted. “Of course, you know as well as I do that kids may be innocent, but they aren’t necessarily honest, or compassionate, or good.”
“Did one of your kids do something disappointing?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe.”
Josie studied her a minute. “Here’s the way I see it. You can proceed one of two ways, if you don’t know the truth. Either you can decide the child is guilty, or that he’s innocent, and base your actions on your decision. Now, the law of this land says that a person is innocent until proven guilty. I’d hope that my own ma would give me the benefit of the doubt until all the evidence was in.”
Alafair shrugged. “All the evidence I have right now points in a direction I don’t want to go. I know this child in my heart, and I cannot belie
ve he would do wrong.”
“You can’t tell me what this is about?” Josie wondered, after a moment.
“No, I’m sorry. Not until I know for sure. I can’t conscience slandering the innocent. I’m sorry to be so infuriating.”
Josie shook her head. “Don’t fret yourself. I’m a mother, too. I know how it is. It doesn’t matter that you raise them all just the same way, they all just go off in their own directions and there isn’t anything in God’s world that you can do about it. You just love them, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
If Alafair had been the type to cry, she might have done it. Instead, she gazed at Josie for a long minute with a steady solemn gaze, then asked for her cobbler crust recipe.
***
Alafair only had to run a matter of yards, across Second Street to Main and up two or three doors, to reach Boynton Mill and Elevator Company, owned by Mr. Russell Lang, the town’s most prosperous grain merchant. At first glance, the place looked deserted, and Alafair puffed in disappointment. But she tried the door and found it open, and she stepped in to the pleasant warmth. Lang’s office was a rather sumptuous affair, as grain merchant’s offices go. Three large, cubbyhole-filled desks stood at right angles to the door, all messy with papers but unoccupied at the moment. Lang’s imposing oak desk sat at the back of the establishment, separated from the ordinary workaday mortals by a gated wooden railing. The proprietor himself was ensconced in his place, and looked up with interest when Alafair walked in.
Alafair was acquainted with Russell Lang, of course, since Shaw patronized his business exclusively, both to buy and sell. She knew Mrs. Lang rather well, from church and all, and liked her. As for Lang himself, she didn’t have much of an opinion. Shaw said he was honest and businesslike, but not given to socializing. Alafair thought him polite enough and not totally devoid of charm, if you held your mouth just right.
Lang smiled and stood up when he recognized Alafair. Apparently he was not adverse to an interruption on a cold, boring day.
“You seem to be left to your own devices, Mr. Lang,” Alafair observed.
Lang stepped out from behind his desk to greet her. “I am indeed, Mrs. Tucker,” he granted. “The clerks are at the warehouse today. What brings you here on such an unpleasant day?”
“I was in town to visit my sister-in-law,” she extemporized, “and while I’m here, I wondered if I might have a word with you? I won’t take up but a few minutes of your time.”
He looked properly curious about what she might possibly have to say to him, and opened the gate in his little fence for her. “I’d be pleased,” he said. “Do come in and have a seat.”
She took the proffered chair in front of his desk, and they settled themselves comfortably. Lang was not a bad-looking man, Alafair noted. Smooth as silk, and apparently always in a good mood. A good way to be if you were in business. Alafair calculated in a split second how to broach her subject, and smiled.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Tucker?” Lang opened.
“Mr. Lang, I expect you heard that Harley Day has gone to meet his maker,” she said.
He folded his hands on his desk. “Yes, I heard that,” he replied.
“I expect also that you have heard that a .22 bullet found its way into Mr. Day’s brain on that night, and that the sheriff is proceeding on the assumption that the same bullet is the cause of Mr. Day’s demise.”
Lang’s lip twitched. “Yes, Mrs. Tucker, I heard that as well,” Lang told her. “It has also come to my attention that young John Lee Day rests under suspicion of having shot that selfsame bullet into his father’s skull.”
“That is true, Mr. Lang.”
“Additionally, I have heard that young John Lee Day and one of your lovely daughters are friendly,” Lang added. “Therefore, I might assume that being a loving mother, you wish that evidence existed proving that this young man is not the perpetrator of this ugly deed.”
Alafair pursed her lips. Lang was astute. “You would be assuming correctly, Mr. Lang,” Alafair admitted. “In fact, knowing the young man as I do, I’m convinced he didn’t do it, and I am going to speak to everyone who could possibly have been in the vicinity of the Day farm that night, and might have seen something that could shed some light on this.”
“I’m curious as to why you have come to see me, then, Mrs. Tucker.”
Alafair paused, mildly surprised. Surely he knew that Mrs. Day would have told the sheriff that Lang was scheduled to meet with Harley the evening he disappeared. “I understand that you told John Lee that you intended to drive out to his farm that very evening to discuss the fact that his father owed you money.”
There was a brief silence as they regarded one another. One of Alafair’s eyebrows inched upward in curiosity. Mr. Lang’s florid face grew more florid. But his expression remained as placid as ever. “Where did you hear that, may I ask?” he wondered.
“Miz Day mentioned it.”
Lang nodded. “It is true that I intended to go out there that evening, Mrs. Tucker. But if you will remember, the weather was wretched. It rained a little, then froze. I didn’t even get a quarter-mile out of town before the buggy slid off the road on a curve.”
“Oh, my. Didn’t hurt your horse, I hope,” Alafair commiserated.
A smile passed over Lang’s face. “Fortunately, no. Thanks for your concern. He kept his feet. Scared the wadding out of the poor creature, though. Took us close to an hour to haul the buggy out of the ditch.”
“Us?”
“Me and the horse,” Lang clarified. “By that time, I had lost my enthusiasm for a confrontation. I intended to go out there Monday afternoon, after the thaw, but by noon it was all over town that Day was dead.”
Alafair nodded. She didn’t need to pursue this line of questioning any further. Scott would check out every detail vigorously. From the look on his face, Lang knew it, too, and wasn’t too happy about the prospect. He had been smart enough to answer her, she thought, with the truth. Or as close to it as he dare.
“Do you intend to sue the estate for your money, Mr. Lang?” she asked.
He answered her in the same civil tones he had been using since she walked in, but his face was so red now, that Alafair feared that his eyeballs might pop out and bounce around the room. “I’ll try to make arrangements with the widow, first, but if that doesn’t succeed, then I do, indeed, intend to sue, Mrs. Tucker.” He paused, then added, “I am not insensitive to the fact that Mrs. Day and her children might be facing some financial difficulty now, but I am, after all, in business. I’m sure that there will be several claims on the estate.”
“I’m sure there will be,” Alafair agreed. She stood, unwilling to risk antagonizing Lang further. “I thank you for being so forthcoming,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your work now, and not bother you any more.”
She moved toward the door, and Lang stood up to see her out. As she walked past him, Lang put his hand on her arm with such fleeting delicacy that she barely felt it. She looked up at him. He was smiling down on her with benign amusement.
“I’ll tell you the truth, Mrs. Tucker,” Lang said to her. “I wasn’t exactly heartbroke when I heard that Day was dead. He was the scum of the earth, and what happened to him was only justice. That black-haired girl of his, the one who ran away, she was a friend of my son’s. Told my boy that she hated her father like sin and corruption, and from the stories I heard, I can’t say as I blame her. He was such a miserable creature that my son couldn’t stand to go out to his place after a while.”
Since Lang gave her an opening, Alafair took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “The gossip around town is that Mr. Day beat your son,” she said.
Lang’s eyes narrowed, but his expression didn’t alter. He didn’t exactly respond to her observation, either. “His wife and kids will be better off without him, and that’s the truth,” he said. “Whoever killed him probably had good reason. I can think of a dozen people who do. But it wasn’t me.”
&nb
sp; Alafair studied his face for a second before she replied. She couldn’t think of a way to ask him where his son was that night without making it sound like an accusation. “Well, I expect it wasn’t you, Mr. Lang,” she said to him, still hoping it might be him after all. “I hope you’ll understand my concern, and I wish you’d tell Sheriff Tucker about some of those dozen people who might wish Harley Day was dead.”
His face was not quite so red now. Apparently her comment had relieved him somewhat. “I’ll do that,” he assured her.
I’ll bet you will, now, she thought, as she stepped back out into the cold. Lang had just proven himself pretty darn acute, and now that she had informed him that she knew he was abroad and in the vicinity that night, he would make haste to give Scott what information he had before Alafair did. His story about his buggy ending up in a ditch sounded suspicious to her. Why would he even admit to being anywhere near the Day farm that night? Any reasonable person would have canceled an unnecessary trip on such an unpleasant night.
***
Alafair and Shaw drove home together in the buckboard, with Alafair’s mare tied to the back and Shaw’s hounds trotting along side. Alafair was uncharacteristically quiet, Shaw noticed. After so many years together, he knew not to prod her. Her little troubled periods came and went, and sometimes he found out what they were about, and sometimes he didn’t. Instead, he chatted about this and that, new gossip he had heard from the kids, the funny stories Scott had told him, the condition and personality of one or another of their animals. He told her he might be hiring a couple of wranglers on permanently. That elicited a grunt from her. The frigid weather was always a good topic. And it was in the midst of a complaint about the weather that Alafair turned on the seat of the buckboard and gazed at Shaw with that look in her eye that told him she might deign to answer him should he ask what was bothering her.
“Something on your mind, honey?” he asked easily.
“This business about the Day boy is driving me out of my mind, Shaw,” she said. “I’m just so concerned that Phoebe might get a broken heart out of this. And I just have a feeling, a real strong feeling that no matter how it looks, John Lee didn’t do it.”