Hornswoggled - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

  Ah, Alafair thought. “And do you share that sentiment?”

  Grant walked back to the desk and sank into his chair. He eyed her without saying anything for so long that Alafair began to feel uncomfortable, and reconsider her escape plan.

  After an interminable silence, they both spoke at once.

  “Mr. Grant…” she said.

  “Miz Tucker…” he said.

  They blinked at one another, then Grant plunged ahead.

  “Miz Tucker, why did you come here? The sheriff has already arrested Louise Kelley’s killer.”

  “I’m not so sure he has, sir,” she told him.

  “You can’t possibly believe I had anything to do with it.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” she lied. “What does seem strange to me, though, is that with as much commotion as was going on at the Kelley house that night, y’all didn’t hear nary a thing.”

  “Why would we? I heard that Louise was killed elsewhere and toted home by her killer at an hour when decent folks are fast asleep.”

  Alafair hesitated half a second before she brazenly ignored the sheriff’s admonition not to talk about what she knew of the murder. “You didn’t hear that Miz Kelley’s sister, Nellie Tolland, claims that Louise killed herself?”

  The expression on Grant’s face couldn’t have been more shocked if Alafair had pulled a sock full of rocks out of her pocket and hit him over the head with it. He straighted so abruptly that she feared his chair would go flying backwards and dump him on the floor. “She never!” he managed.

  Who was “she” and what did she never? Alafair chose to act like he was talking about Nellie and her claim. “She does. She says she and her husband came to check on Louise late that night and found that she had plunged a knife into her own heart. There was a note…”

  “A note!”

  “Well, according to Miz Tolland, there was. She claims she destroyed it, then tried to make it look like Walter murdered Louise.”

  Grant slapped the desk with the flat of his hand. “I knew it!” he exclaimed. “I knew somebody had been in there and…”

  Time froze for an instant.

  The blood rushed to Alafair’s head so forcefully that her vision swam. She hadn’t really expected to be right.

  The look of triumph melted off of Grant’s face as it dawned on him what he had said. He dropped his hand into his lap and slowly sat back in the chair. “I’ve been expecting to have this conversation for months now, Miz Tucker. Of course, I reckoned it would be the sheriff who walked through that door, but it don’t matter, really. It’s been weighing on me something awful all this long time.” He paused and almost smiled at the horrified look on her face before he continued.

  “No, Miz Tucker. I didn’t kill her, and neither did my wife or daughter. But you were right about our hearing the commotion over at the Kelleys’ that night. Well, it wasn’t exactly a commotion. But we don’t generally hear any noise at all in the street after dark. We did hear Louise come home at around half past eight. Heard hoofbeats on the street, heard her voice. Woke me and Wanda up. Wanda got up and looked out the window and saw Louise standing on the sidewalk in front of her house. Leastways she reckoned it was Louise. It was a woman, and we had heard Louise’s voice. There was a man on a horse riding away at a walk. It was too dark for Wanda to get a good look at him. Louise took off walking north. Never did go into her house.”

  So Billy Bond had been telling the truth about that part, Alafair thought. He dropped Louise off at home and rode away. At least at first. But where had Louise gone?

  “We knew Walter was supposed to be out of town until the next day. Wanda said some uncomplimentary things about a woman gallivanting around at all hours of the night while her husband is away. Then we went back to sleep and slept like the dead until about ten o’clock, when we heard a woman crying. We saw a light in the Kelleys’ window, but it looked like a kerosene lantern, not an electric light like Louise would normally have on.

  “Still, I reckoned it was just Louise finally coming home. But then we heard somebody come out her back door and drive away in a buggy. It seemed strange. So we decided to go over there and check on Louise to make sure everything was all right.”

  “Did Susan go too?” Alafair asked.

  “My daughter was fast asleep on the other side of the house.” Grant was firm. “Susan had nothing to do with that night. Anyway, me and Wanda pulled on some clothes and went into Louise’s house through the back door. We nearly perished of shock when we found her laying there dead. Wanda screamed so loud I half expected the whole town to come rushing.

  “It was clear that there wasn’t nothing we could do for the poor woman. My first thought was to go for the sheriff, of course, but then we got to looking around, and things looked mighty strange, let me tell you. There was three or four bloody footprints around her body, and the shoes that made those prints were sitting on the floor neat as you please. There were barber tools strewn around the room, and the oddest thing was that somebody had written a W on the floor in blood. One look at that knife sticking out of Louise’s chest and anybody with half a hold on his wits would know she couldn’t have stayed alive long enough to write anything.

  “It was clear as day that somebody was trying to make it look like Walter killed her. We knew Walter was due back the next morning. He’d have walked into a trap. If he left Louise as he found her, it would look bad. But if he tried to clean things up, that would look worse. It was near on ten-thirty by this time. We didn’t have much time to figure what to do. So we decided to make it look like Louise had never been home at all.”

  “But why?” Alafair interrupted. “If you had gone for the sheriff right then, Walter would have been in the clear. He was still out of town, and if you could see that somebody was trying to make Walter look guilty, Sheriff Tucker sure would, too.”

  Grant bit his lip. He looked sad, and more than a little abashed. “In the dead of night, faced with a dead woman, things don’t always seem so clear. It was Wanda who wanted to make sure no suspicion at all fell on Walter. She admires him a bunch, you see.”

  Alafair’s eyebrows inched up. Grant’s attitude toward Walter was not at all what she expected. All the gossip she had heard from Hattie and Nadine Fluke had led her to believe that Grant didn’t care for the man. “So you hauled her off on the back of a donkey and put her in Cane Creek?”

  “Oh, no. We don’t even own a donkey. We wanted to be quiet, so I wrapped her in an old sheet and put her in a hand cart. I carted her just barely out of town and left her right by the road where she’d be seen at first light, across from Calvin Ross’ place. Wanda stayed behind and cleaned that house up so spotless you’d never know anybody had been there that night. I took those bloody shoes with me and buried them in a hole up under the brush on the way back into town. I don’t know how Wanda missed that rug. I don’t even remember seeing it. Maybe I kicked it back up under the sideboard when I was trying to get Louise’s body out of the house.”

  “You didn’t put Louise in the creek?”

  “No, I swear it. I left her beside the road just outside of town. Somebody must have come along later and put her in the creek. Though if Louise killed herself, who would want to do that? It must have been pure meanness.”

  Alafair slumped in her chair and scrubbed at her cheeks with her palms, suddenly so tired that she wished she could just curl up right then and there and take a nap. “Lord have mercy, Mr. Grant,” she blurted. “Are y’all crazy? Dogs could have got at her, or a coyote! Besides, didn’t it occur to you for a minute that maybe Walter did do it? He could have sneaked back into town early and then left again, telling everyone he was delayed in Kansas City. Maybe Louise really didn’t die right away—then she could have tried to write her killer’s name in blood. It could have been possible that the killer took off his bloody shoes so he wouldn’t leave any more trail than he did, and then left the house in his stocking feet.”

  “But that’s not what happened,” Grant
protested. “You just said…”

  “Yes,” Alafair interrupted, “but you didn’t know that. You might have been protecting a murderer, for all you know. And your wife wants that man for her girl?”

  “He’s not a murderer, Miz Tucker. You told me so yourself. He’s a good man who don’t deserve a moment’s suspicion on him.”

  “How do you know that? How well do you know the man, or his wife either, for that matter?”

  Grant smiled at the question. “Well enough, ma’am. I never told anybody this before, but there was some trouble, once, with my business…” He hesitated and looked away. “Some trouble with the books. Walter, he found out. Wanda told him, if you want to know.”

  The words were costing Grant a lot of effort. His face flushed. But he continued. “He came to me of his own accord and offered to make it good. He gave me money. A lot of money. And he never asked me how I got myself into trouble, nor did he ever ask me to pay him back. I did pay him back, over time. But he saved me from ruin when he didn’t have no reason to, and I reckon I owe him something more than money for that.” He flicked a glance at Alafair. “So yes, Miz Tucker, I know Walter well enough. And as for Louise, well, Wanda didn’t get on with her, but I always felt mighty sorry for her. I know she harried her husband, but I never thought she was a mean person. Just unhappy. She had the saddest eyes. I always thought she really did love him, but they just didn’t know how to get on together.

  “I felt mighty bad that she got murdered, but I knew as well as Wanda that Walter didn’t do it. Of course, if we’d known it was a suicide… But we had no idea what Louise’s sister did. Now, she’s the one ought to be in jail.”

  “She is in jail, sir.”

  Alafair and Grant looked at one another for a moment. She didn’t need to tell him that he and his wife were going to be in jail soon, too.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked him at length.

  “Go to the sheriff, I reckon. Look, Miz Tucker, I know we did a stupid thing. I feel bad about it, though we did have good intentions at the time. I’ve been expecting it would all come out eventually. I might go to jail for a spell, maybe lose my job, but at least I’ve got things arranged so that Susan will be all right. Wanda, too, I hope. I’ll hate it if she has to spend time in prison, as well.” He stood up, resolute, and took his suit coat off its peg on the wall. “Well, best get it over with.”

  Alafair stood as well. “Lawyer Meriwether is in his office, Mr. Grant. Why don’t you and me go over there, and you can talk to him a while, get some advice, before you turn yourself in?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alafair left Grant with Mr. Meriwether, retrieved Grace from Bud’s lap, and hurried back down to the street. She felt rather like she had been beaten with a stick. How much more complicated can this thing get, Hattie had asked? She had no idea.

  Someone had killed Louise Kelly and tried to make it look like suicide. Then the Tollands make it look like murder again. Then, if Grant was to be believed, he and his wife tried to make it look like Louise had never been home. Had everyone in town taken leave of their senses? And who, please God, had put Louise’s body in the creek?

  Grace interrupted her mother’s reverie by trying to squirm out of her arms and squealing loudly. Alafair returned to the present, cooed at the baby while checking her diaper, and readjusted the child’s frock.

  It was a pretty day, and a lot of people were in town this Saturday, shopping and strolling. One by one, half a dozen people stopped and spoke to Alafair and chucked the baby under the chin, but after they had passed, Alafair stood in the middle of the sidewalk, pondering Grant’s story. It occurred to her that Walter had come off pretty well in Grant’s version of events, having performed a selfless act of generosity for his neighbor. And on top of it, Grant hadn’t spoken badly of Louise either, which was pretty unusual. Most people who knew the Kelleys seemed to love one and despise the other.

  A few doors away, she could see that the barber shop was doing a brisk business. A little further down, several people walked in to Spradling’s Furniture. At the end of the street, Alafair could just see the Sheriff’s office and jail.

  I should visit with Hattie, she thought, or Josie, or Nadine Fluke.

  But Billy Bond and his cousin Jeff, as well as the Tollands, were sitting in that jail just a few yards away. Come Monday, they would all be in Muskogee, along with the Grants, and her opportunity would be gone forever. For the people in that jail knew things that Alafair wanted to know.

  She imagined herself standing on the boxes at the jailhouse window. “Tell me, Billy,” she was saying, “did you think to kill Louise and pin it on Kelley in revenge for what he did to your girl? Tell me, Ned, what kind of woman was the late Louise Kelley? Was it her fault that she died? Was she ever happy with the barber? Was it her nature to be discontent and court trouble? Did your wife Nellie do in her own sister over a liaison between you and her? Did Louise go to Nellie for support after she left Billy, and did Nellie stab her and enlist you in a wild scheme to cover her tracks? What about you, Wanda Grant? Did you dislike Louise even more than you let on? Did you want to clear the way for your daughter? Or was Mr. Grant lying when he told me y’all found her dead? Was he Louise’s secret lover? Was it your bone-handled knife in Louise’s chest, Wanda? And whose bloodied rug ended up stuffed under Louise’s sideboard?”

  Dare I, Alafair wondered?

  “Ba!” Grace exclaimed, and tried to crawl up over Alafair’s shoulder.

  Alafair laughed and readjusted the baby in her arms. Bah, indeed. And how would she manage another window interview with all those people in the street and a wiggly six-month-old to wrangle? Yet, she stepped off the curb and crossed the street. She was walking toward the alley when the door to the Sheriff’s office opened and a little-bit-of-nothing girl in a nondescript outfit walked out onto the street.

  Alafair stopped in her tracks.

  “Peggy Crocker!” she called, and the girl turned and looked at her.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Peggy managed. Her pale brown eyes widened in mild curiosity.

  Alafair walked up to her gingerly, fearing that if she made a sudden move, Peggy would bolt and run like a startled deer. “My name is Miz Tucker,” Alafair opened. “Have you been visiting Billy?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Peggy replied. “Do you know Billy?”

  “We have spoken,” Alafair told her. “It’s hard for me to believe that Billy did such an awful, mean thing as kill some woman.”

  “Oh, he never,” Peggy assured her. She fell silent and gazed at Alafair patiently, waiting to either hear more or be dismissed.

  Alafair studied the girl for a moment, just a little surprised. This was the girl who supposedly had a torrid affair with Walter Kelley, then brazenly went to Louise and informed her that she was carrying her husband’s child? Peggy wasn’t that pretty, and she didn’t seem to be a sparkling conversationalist. She did have the natural attractiveness that comes with youth and innocence, though. Such a girl might think that someone as well favored as Walter left golden footprints when he walked. Not an affair. Led astray, more likely.

  Peggy’s gaze had left Alafair and was now fastened on Grace. Alafair remembered that Peggy was rumored to have lost an illicit child a few months back, and by the wistful expression on her face, Alafair could believe it. Grace, for her part, was looking back, sizing up her new admirer.

  Alafair recognized an opening when she saw one. “This is Grace,” she introduced. “We’re heading over to Williams’ Drug Store to meet up with my other kids and have a soda. Why don’t you come along with us? I’ll be glad to buy you whatever you want.”

  Peggy was clearly tempted, but she shook her head. “Oh, thank you, ma’am, but I got to get going. My daddy will be along to get me, directly. He said he don’t want me wandering around town.”

  “You could hold the baby,” Alafair said.

  Peggy blinked. “Well, maybe for just a minute,” she decided.

 
As the two women walked down the sidewalk, Alafair made innocuous conversation about the weather, asked after the health of Peggy’s family, told her a few things about her own family. By the time they reached the drug store, Alafair had sized Peggy Crocker up one side and down the other.

  This child, she thought, is as ignorant of the ways of the world as she can possibly be. She would believe anything Walter Kelley or Billy Bond or any other person a year older or an inch taller told her. She was trusting enough to answer any question Alafair put to her without a second thought.

  When they entered the drug store, Alafair immediately scanned for her children. Charlie was lounging against a wall next to the book rack with a peppermint stick in one hand and a dime novel in the other—Zane Gray, Alafair noted. The thought occurred to her that Mr. Williams probably didn’t appreciate having a sticky-handed boy thumbing through his books and magazines. Blanche and Sophronia were seated at the counter licking ferociously at fast-melting ice cream cones. Alafair led Peggy to one of the two small tables around the corner from the counter and ordered two ice cream sodas from the boy behind the counter. She stood Grace up on the table and held her under the arms while the infant bounced up and down and waved her arms about.

  “This baby has enough energy for two youngsters,” she said to Peggy.

  “Do you suppose I could hold her, now?” Peggy ventured.

  “I expect.” Alafair walked the baby toward Peggy, who lifted her off the table and into her lap. Grace was amenable, especially after Peggy made a silly face.

  “She sure is a cute one,” Peggy said. “I can’t wait to have one of my own.”

  “You and Billy are planning on marrying soon, aren’t you? I imagine you’ll have your own baby to play with pretty quick.”

  Peggy sobered. “If he don’t get hanged for murder, first,” she said.

  “But you said you know he didn’t do it,” Alafair noted.