Hornswoggled - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

“At least you don’t already have five grandchildren. Soon, though, I expect, eh?” Grandma Sally straightened and pulled her bonnet off with one hand and placed it on the swing beside her. Her shrewd black eyes glittered at Alafair as she adjusted the baby in her lap and sat back comfortably. Alafair sat down in a chair and crossed her arms over her chest, prepared for a revelation.

  “Me and Peter just got back from over to Okmulgee yesterday,” Sally began. “We went over and spent Sunday visiting Charles and Lavinia. Went over on Saturday so we could go to church with them. They been bragging about their new preacher and Peter wanted to get a look at him his own self. There we was at church and who should come in but the Crockers…”

  Alafair’s eyebrows flew up.

  “…old Adam and his wife Margaret and their girl Peggy…”

  “The girl at the funeral, Walter Kelley’s erstwhile lover,” Alafair interjected.

  “So they say,” Grandma affirmed. “I hear from Lavinia that Peggy’s swain Billy Bond has spoke for Peggy to her daddy. He’s been away working for a while, but they plan to be married this winter.”

  “They reconciled, then.”

  “Must have. Charles and Lavinia barely know the Crockers to speak to them, but they hadn’t heard any tales of Peggy ever having been with child.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Sally cocked her head and shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe they just don’t know. However, I will tell you that I contrived to talk to Miz Crocker after church. I got to talking about the family and steered around to my son Shaw and his kids. Mentioned in the most casual way I knew how that one of my granddaughters was interested in the widower Walter Kelley whose poor late wife was murdered by a couple of low down dogs. I thought the woman was going to explode all over the wall right then and there, her face got so red. She told me that I’d better warn my granddaughter that Kelley might be a charmer and rich to boot, but he wasn’t worth spit. Them was her exact words. I said I was surprised she even knew him, trying to get her to tell me more, don’t you know. But if Walter ruined her daughter she wasn’t going to be telling a stranger about it, and I don’t blame her. But she did say that she had heard tell that the barber was too fond of the fair sex. And, that her soon-to-be son-in-law Billy Bond hates Walter Kelley like death, for what reason she weren’t at liberty to say, and that he has swore that if he should ever meet Walter on the road he intends to shoot him straight away.”

  “Did the daughter look sort of like a little bit of nothing?” Alafair asked.

  Sally smiled. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

  “That’s her, then, the girl by the fence at Louise’s funeral. I keep thinking about this girl, Ma. All these folks keep turning up that hate Walter, but Peggy is the only one I can come up with who has much of a reason to have wanted Louise out of the way. She hardly seemed big enough to stab somebody like that, but stranger things have happened. Nellie Tolland’s story is that Peggy went over to Louise’s house when Walter was at work and told her there was a baby on the way. She was looking to break them up, I reckon, but since it didn’t work, maybe Peggy thought that Walter would want to marry her if Louise was dead. Maybe after she killed Louise, she took Walter’s shoes and razor for keepsakes.”

  “Them’s a lot of maybes,” Sally pointed out. “How did she get Louise’s body to the creek?”

  Alafair shook her head. “Well, she would have had to have help.”

  “If she did have help, it couldn’t have been Billy Bond. He wanted her back. He wouldn’t have been interested in clearing the way for her to have Walter,” Sally said. “I know for a fact that Scott has been out to the Crocker farm and questioned Peggy and her daddy and mama. He’s still after that man Louise was seen with on the night she died. He knows more about what happened that night than he’s telling us.”

  Before Alafair could comment, the girls banged out the front screen door, each with a tall wet glass of tea gripped in her two hands. Sophronia handed hers to her grandmother, then proceeded to lean her elbows on Sally’s knees and go face to face with Grace. Blanche gave her glass of tea to Alafair, who directed her to drag a chair up from the other side of the porch to serve as an end table. Alafair sipped at her overflowing glass, envisioning the trail of tea droplets and ice chips that she knew must stretch from the kitchen to the front porch. The tea was so sweet that it set her teeth on edge. The tea syrup had already been sweetened, yet Alafair could see from the inch of undissolved sugar in the bottom of her glass that the girls had taken it upon themselves to sweeten it even more. She caught Sally’s eye over the rim of her glass.

  “Mmmm! Delicious!” Sally exclaimed ostentatiously.

  Sophronia stood up straight and bounced on her toes. “Blanche and me tasted it when we made it so it would be extra good.”

  “And it sure is,” Alafair said. “Thank you. Now y’all girls go play in the yard a while so me and Grandma can talk.”

  Sophronia headed down the steps, but Blanche pouted a little at her mother’s elbow. “I want to stay with you and Grandma,” she said.

  Alafair put her arm around the girl’s thin shoulders. “I know, honey, but I need you to go and keep Fronie out of our hair for fifteen minutes or so while Grandma and me talk some business.”

  Blanche knew she was being dismissed, but she accepted her lot philosophically and followed her sister into the yard.

  “I’ll tell you what, Ma,” Alafair continued, once the girls were out of earshot, “whenever we ask any questions about the death of Louise, instead we hear another tale about how Walter leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever he goes.”

  “Broken hearts and bitter women,” Sally added.

  Alafair nodded. “I hope Louise finds justice in this world and rest in the next, but even if Walter Kelley is as innocent as the angels of her murder, he ain’t the kind of man I want to see Alice mixed up with.”

  Sally fell silent for a minute while she pondered this statement, pushing the porch swing lazily back and forth with her heels and absently stroking Grace’s head. “What do you plan to do about it?” she asked, at length.

  Alafair sighed. “I’ve already got Alice to promise me not to see Walter for one month. I told her if they really love each other their feelings won’t fade in a month, and if they do, better to know now.” She paused and smiled. “Do you suppose she’d obey me if I forbade her to see him ever again?”

  Sally smiled back. “Maybe.”

  “You really think so?” Alafair asked wistfully.

  “No,” Sally admitted. “Listen, honey, I think you’ve done all you can do to discourage her, short of proving that Walter murdered his wife. That month long break is a good idea. But Alice is a woman grown, and mighty confident to boot. She’ll do what she wants. Fortunately, she ain’t stupid. Maybe she’ll decide for herself that he ain’t the one for her. But don’t push her too much. You don’t want to drive her away from you. If she does go ahead and marry him, she may need you later on.”

  “Shaw says pretty much the same thing. Don’t make it easy, though.”

  “I expect not.”

  “When Alice was little, she had the hardest head that ever was, do you remember? She never really argued with me, but if she decided to do something, she’d do it whether I forbade her or not. She’d rather take her punishment than not get her way. Her and Charlie are just alike that way. I remember once when Alice was about four or five, I caught her playing in the ash bucket three times in one day. I sent her outside once and swatted her bottom once, and she just jutted out her bottom lip and went right back to the ashes as soon as my back was turned. I ended up shutting her in the girls’ bedroom for an hour. I went around outside after about fifteen minutes to check on her through the window and she was standing there making faces at the door. I nearly laughed myself silly.” She paused, picked up her tea glass and wiped the moisture from the bottom with her apron tail. “Don’t seem so funny now,” she added.

  A long silence fell. Sally put
Grace down on the porch, and the baby half crawled, half wiggled over to Alafair’s shoe. She slapped at the shoe for a moment, then pulled herself into a sitting position using her mother’s skirt as an aid. Absorbed in this drama, Sally didn’t realize at first that Alafair had asked her a question. She looked up. “What did you say, darlin’?”

  “I said, do you think that the departed ever talk to us who are still living?” Alafair repeated.

  Sally wasn’t expecting the question, but she wasn’t surprised. She blinked, considering. “Well, I do,” she finally confessed. “What makes you think about this?”

  Alafair shrugged. “I never told anybody before,” she said, “but a few times in my life I’ve thought…” She hesitated, unsure of Sally’s reaction.

  The older woman gauged Alafair’s mood and smiled. “A few times in my life, I’ve thought, too.”

  “Really?” Alafair asked, relieved. “I’ve never even told Shaw. I was afraid he’d think I’ve gone right round the bend.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Sally assured her. “Or he wouldn’t say so if he did, because he’s heard me talk about it enough. You know, my ma was a full-blood Cherokee from way up in the hills in the Ozarks. Her mama and daddy’s folks ran off into the hills while the army was moving them from the Carolinas to the Indian Territory, way a long time ago, on the Trail of Tears. They aimed to get clean away from white folks. My granddaddy hated white folks. He wouldn’t have nothing to do with my ma for years after she married up with my daddy. But the Cherokees don’t do things the way white folks do. Most figure that if you marry with a Cherokee, you get to be one yourself, whether you’re white or black or Chinese. My grandma ran her own house and never paid Grandpa no mind if she wanted to see my ma. I went and stayed with them a lot. They knew English, but neither of them would deign to speak a lick of it, so we kids had to learn to talk to them in the Tsa-la-gi. ‘Du-da never had nothing against us grandkids, and he taught me a lot about the world of the spirits, is what he called it. My daddy, though, was a Christian man, and didn’t put no stock in that kind of thinking at all, but I don’t see why not.”

  “So you’ve actually seen some things?” Alafair wondered. She wasn’t sure how else to put it. Seen some ghosts? Had some experiences you can’t explain?

  But Sally understood her all right.

  “Why, for certain, honey. Anybody with an open heart is liable to. Especially if the one gone before is someone you love. I’ll tell you, I’ve felt the presence of Shaw’s daddy, Jim, many times over the years. My darlin’ Jim was a black-haired boy, with green eyes like a mountain stream. His ways was as sweet as honey. When Jim died, it like to broke my heart. Worried him up in heaven, I think. Every once in a while, now, I hear him knocking at the window late at night. I know it’s him, because he always just knocks three times. That was our signal to each other when he was alive. ‘It’s me,’ we were saying. It usually happens when we’ve had a grief or a worry. I think he just wants to know that we’re all right.”

  Alafair was intrigued, and relieved as well. “You know, I think my boy Bobby helped me get home last year when old Jim Leonard knocked me out down there by the creek. He looked older—about the age he’d be now, if he’d lived—but rosy cheeked and happy. It was a comfort to me to see him.”

  Sally nodded. “It’s a blessing.”

  Alafair looked off into the yard. “That was the worst thing ever happened in my life, when Bobby got into the coal oil behind the stove and drank it and died like that. For years after that, in my dreams, I could see myself running toward town with his little limp body in my arms, trying to get to the doctor. But you know, since that day by the creek, when I saw him, I haven’t had that dream.”

  She looked over to see her mother-in-law regarding her thoughtfully. “He came to let you know he’s happy up in heaven,” she told Alafair matter-of-factly, “and that you don’t have to fret over him any more.”

  Alafair smiled. “I think that Louise Kelley is trying to tell me something, too,” she said. “I don’t know why. I just keep sensing things.”

  “What things?” Sally urged.

  “Ammonia,” Alafair said. “Sounds funny, I know. I keep smelling ammonia, even when no one else does. I smelled it real strong when I stopped by to look at her grave, and I smelled it in her house, which is what made me take a look at that rug.”

  Sally raised her eyebrows and nodded. “She was a troubled soul when she was alive. I don’t see why she wouldn’t still be troubled now. I expect there is something she wants someone to figure out.”

  “But why me?” Alafair wondered. “Louise Kelley didn’t know me from Adam’s off ox.”

  “Because you’re the only one she can get through to, the only one who can sense her, I’m thinking.”

  The conversation was interrupted when Sophronia and Blanche’s childish chatter suddenly increased in volume to angry shrieks. Both mother and grandmother leaped to their feet as the girls’ play erupted into a real, rolling on the ground dust-up with fists and bare feet flying. Alafair was between them in a second, holding them apart with a bruising grip on their upper arms, their dirty little toes barely touching the ground.

  “Ow, Mama, ow, ow!” Sophronia mewled like a pathetic kitten.

  “Stop it, now,” Alafair said with perfect calm. She let go, and both girls sagged, aware that they were in trouble, now. “What were y’all fighting about?” Alafair asked them as they stared at the ground. They glanced at each other, but neither had anything to say.

  “Blanche?” Alafair said.

  Blanche mumbled something unintelligible, and silence fell again.

  Alafair placed her hands on her hips. “Well, then. It must have been something pretty important, so I expect I shouldn’t interrupt you. But it better be a fair fight. You girls turn around back to back.”

  Blanche and Sophronia looked up at her, baffled. Alafair made a circle with her index finger in the air. “Turn around, now, like I told you.”

  The girls did as they were told, already experienced enough at childhood not to expect logic from an adult. Alafair pushed them together back to back and passed her hand over the tops of their heads, measuring. “Blanche may be older, but Fronie’s just about as tall, so I guess it’s fair enough,” she observed. She stepped back. “Y’all go ahead, then.”

  The girls didn’t move, but looked up at their mother, still uncomprehending.

  “Go ahead, then,” Alafair repeated. “You were so anxious to pound on each other. Go ahead on, whale away.”

  “I don’t want to no more, Mama,” Blanche fretted.

  “Me neither,” Sophronia agreed, barely audible.

  “Why not?” Alafair asked. “You were mighty mad a few minutes ago. Aren’t you mad at your sister anymore, Fronie?”

  “No,” Sophronia admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t remember,” Sophronia whispered.

  “Blanche?”

  “No, ma’am,” Blanche managed.

  “Y’all go around back and wash up, then. Just look at your pinafores.” Before she had finished speaking, the girls were gone in a cloud of dust.

  Alafair turned to see Sally on the top step of the porch, laughing. Grace was squirming mightily in Grandma’s arms, desperate to get down and join the fun.

  “Come on, Grandma,” Alafair said as she walked back toward the porch. “Let’s go inside a spell and I’ll make some tea that we can rightly drink. You can see the new dresses I’m making for the girls while I run a mop over the floor.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do about Alice?” Sally asked her.

  “Oh, I probably ought to let it be,” Alafair admitted. “But I probably won’t. Look, here comes Shaw.”

  Shaw cantered up toward the house from the road on his black mare. The sleeves of his work shirt were rolled up above his elbows, and his boots and levis were dusty from working with the mules. He reined before the gate and leaned over the saddle horn when he saw
his mother on the porch with Alafair. He pushed his sweat-stained Stetson back with his thumb. “Howdy, Ma,” he greeted, white teeth glinting from under the dark mustache. “What brings you around?”

  “Evening, son,” Sally responded. “Papa and I visited your brother in Okmulgee Sunday last. I come with all the news from over there.”

  “They fine?”

  “They are,” Sally confirmed.

  “Well, I’ve got some news that’ll interest you ladies. I just met John Lee on the road, yonder. He just came from town. He tells me that they caught the boy who they think killed Louise Kelley. Seems he was holed up down around Ardmore along with a cousin of his. Scott will be going down on the train to pick both of them up tonight.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Harriet Tucker, known to all as Hattie, mistress of the Boynton Mercantile and wife to Sheriff Scott Tucker, walked down the steps of her two-story white frame house on Oak Street just after seven-thirty in the morning, holding a two-and-a-half-gallon milk pail covered with a dish towel. The milk pail was emitting the delicious odors of breakfast into the morning air, and Hattie had to slap the hand of her fifteen-year-old son Spike as he ran past her out of the house.

  “But I’m hungry, Ma!” Spike protested.

  “You just et, boy,” Hattie said, exasperated. “I swear, next time I’m only having girls. Now get on out of here before you’re late for school.”

  Spike hugged her around the shoulders and was gone down the street before Hattie reached the front gate. Hattie and Scott had four sons, all grown or nearly so. They had named the boys the perfectly respectable and ordinary names of James, John, Charles, and Paul, but there were so many other Tuckers named James, John, Charles, and Paul, that Hattie’s brood had ended up being called Slim, Stretch, Butch, and Spike. Hattie was pondering the vagaries of having to fill so many bottomless pits and didn’t notice at first that two women in a buggy were eyeing her from across the street. Hattie peered at them a moment before she opened the gate and walked across the dusty road to the side of the two-seat buggy.