by Donis Casey
Dan leaned forward on his elbows and quirked up an ironic little smile. “I don’t mind,” he said. He looked up at Alafair. “My pa told me that you’re worried about your girl Phoebe, Miz Tucker, because she and John Lee are sweet on one another. I reckon that’s why you want to ask me about this.”
Alafair blinked at him, surprised. Either this young man was as astute as his father, or Alafair was going to have to admit to being a ham-handed interrogator.
“Well, yes,” Alafair admitted, abashed. “I’m sorry to be bothering you with this, son. But I am worried about my daughter, and when I heard that my husband had hired you to come out, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask you what you think.” She didn’t compound the matter by confessing that bringing him out to the farm for questioning had been her idea. “Do you have any thoughts about who might have shot Mr. Day?”
Dan shook his head. “I’d like to help you, Miz Tucker,” he said. “I like John Lee, and I’d like it if he could be happy with a fine girl. But I don’t have no idea who shot Mr. Day. He was such an awful old snake that anybody could have done it. He was a cheater and a thief. He tried to cheat my pa, and my pa was just about the only merchant in town who would do business with him when he did it. I’d have been happy to do the honors if I’d have thought of it before Maggie Ellen run off.”
“I heard he came between you,” Alafair said.
Dan looked up at her, then over at Shaw, as though he was trying to determine how much they knew before he answered. “He tried,” he said at last. “But we just got sneakier about meeting. It was a lot harder to see one another, though. Sometimes I didn’t see her for weeks as a time. I told her, though….” He paused and gazed into middle space for a few seconds, then resumed briskly. “I told her, though, that I’d be proud to marry her any time she wanted. We could get us a little house in Boynton. But she wanted to get completely away, out of the county, and take as many of her brothers and sisters as she could. I suppose she thought she couldn’t wait any more, but I was surprised when she ran off like that. I expect that once she hears her old man is dead, she’ll show up again.”
“Do you think she keeps in touch with John Lee?” Alafair wondered.
Dan shrugged. His face was very red, now. “I don’t know what John Lee knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if she keeps in touch with Naomi, somehow, though. She was pretty protective of Naomi.”
Shaw stood up. “All right, Alafair,” he interjected firmly. “I think you’ve tormented this fellow enough for one day. We’ve got to get back to work, now, before the day gets completely gone.” He seized Alafair by the arm and hustled her out the tool shed door into the cold.
“He seems like a good honest boy,” Alafair observed, totally unaffected by the look of exasperation on Shaw’s face. “But he never once mentioned that Harley beat him up, did you notice that?”
“I doubt if it was his proudest moment,” Shaw said. “Now, if you’re done with your questions, go on back up to the house and let us get on with it.”
“Now, Shaw,” Alafair chided. “If you’re so set against my talking with Dan, why did you go ahead and invite him out here? I told you what I intended.”
Shaw let go of her arm. “Well, maybe I did,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I think that’s enough. He’s bound to get the idea you suspect him of something, otherwise. Did you even learn anything you didn’t already know?”
“I learned that him and Maggie Ellen kept on seeing one another for a while after Harley drove him off.”
Shaw made shooing motions. “Go home and think about that, then. I’ve got to get back inside before Dan thinks I’ve abandoned him.”
Alafair trotted back toward the house, looking happy, and Shaw returned to the tool shed, feeling torn, and put out with himself for his own curiosity, and for indulging Alafair in her little plot.
“I’m sorry about that,” he apologized to Dan, as he sat back down at the table. “She’s got it into her head that maybe if she talks to everybody who ever knew Harley Day, she can figure out who did him in better than the sheriff can.”
“And clear John Lee?”
“I expect that’s the plan. Anyway, I hope you don’t take offense.”
Dan’s complexion had cleared and he looked fairly sanguine about the whole situation as he took a bite of cornbread before responding. “I can’t hardly fault a mother for wanting to help her daughter,” he told Shaw. “I just hope she don’t think I did it, or my pa, either.” Another bite of cornbread, more chewing. His face underwent a subtle change as he pondered the death of Harley Day. “He was an awful man, though,” he mused aloud. “It was like he took pleasure in making his own daughter unhappy. It was evil the way he did that.”
Shaw sat back in his chair and studied the mechanic as he spoke, wondering if anyone was really as he first seemed.
***
When he left the tool shed an hour later, Shaw could see Alafair flitting around on the back porch, busying herself with washing out a few of the children’s clothes. He smiled to himself as he trudged toward the house. Alafair had picked a chore that would enable her to keep an eye on the shed. He braced himself for the quizzing he was in for.
“Hello, sugar,” he greeted, as he stepped onto the porch. Alafair was already wringing out the small shirt she had been washing. She hurriedly pinned it to her makeshift clothesline that was strung across one corner of the porch, and followed him into the kitchen.
“Y’all about finished with the harrow?” she opened.
“Dan is just packing up the axle right now. He’s going to sharpen up another disc or two, and then I’m going to take him back into town, and pick up the kids, while I’m at it. I sure will be glad when it warms up some and the kids can get themselves back and forth by themselves.”
Alafair knew that the kids could have managed by themselves very well if they had to, but Shaw was too tenderhearted to make them fend with the cold, so she didn’t argue with him. “I expect you’re here for some blankets and hot coffee for the trip, then,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of hot bricks for you on the stove in the parlor, too. I’ve got a bit of dinner ready. Do you think Dan would like some?”
Shaw sat down while Alafair bustled around the kitchen retrieving dishes. “No, I asked him, but he said his mother is expecting him for dinner at her house. I’ll eat, though. I’m peckish, and Dan won’t be ready to go for a half-hour or so.”
“Did he say anything else after I left?” Alafair asked casually, as she set a plate down in front of him.
“About what?” he wondered, feeling perverse.
“You know what,” she said, annoyed. “About what we were discussing when I was out there.”
“He said he hopes you don’t think he did it.”
Alafair poured him some coffee and began placing bowls of hot food on the table. “Well, I don’t know, Shaw,” she said. “He seems like a nice boy. I hope he didn’t do it, too. But I hope more that somebody else other than John Lee did it. Where do you suppose Dan was the night Harley was killed? I couldn’t think how to ask him. Well, I’m sure Scott did, but I might mention it to him, just the same.”
“I wonder what Scott thinks about Dan’s connection with the Day family,” Shaw mused.
“Do you think Scott would tell you if you asked him?”
Shaw laughed. “No,” he assured her.
“He sure keeps his thoughts to himself,” Alafair said, exasperated.
“He’s not going to say anybody is guilty ’til he thinks they are. That’s a quality you want in your sheriff,” Shaw noted wryly. “When I saw him this morning, though, he did tell me that they still haven’t found a gun.” He paused to mound mashed potatoes on his plate. “It would have to be a pretty small gun, he thinks, like a little muff pistol. Most derringers, the single-shots, take a .41 caliber bullet, but every once in a while you come across one of them two or four-shots that takes a .22 bullet. Useless little gun. I think of them as the kind of gun a St
. Louis society lady carries when she has to walk down the alley.”
Alafair’s grip tightened on the spoon she was using to stir the squash on the the stove, and a sweat broke out on her forehead. Shaw obviously didn’t remember, but Alafair was suddenly thinking of just the kind of pistol that he was describing. She owned one—a two-shot .22 ladies’ derringer, silver-plated and ebony handled. Her father had given it to her when she was sixteen, just about the time she began to show an interest in boys, she remembered ironically. She kept it in its little velvet-lined box on the top shelf of her chiffarobe, along with a package of two bullets. She hadn’t touched it in years. It couldn’t be, she was thinking. She didn’t recall that she had ever told any of the children about her little pistol. Of course, children snoop….
***
It took every bit of the considerable fortitude Alafair possessed to get through dinner without alerting Shaw to her agitation. She made a typically huge meal just for him, sat down and ate her share, chatting pleasantly all the while, and was in the process of clearing the table when Shaw rebundled himself and went out to fetch Dan from the tool shed. The instant the door slammed behind him, Alafair was in her bedroom like a shot, pulling the little box down from behind a wall of folded quilts and hat boxes.
She had the box open as soon as both hands were on it, and so knew it was empty before she set it on her dresser, but she stood there for quite a while staring into it nonetheless. She couldn’t think. Her heart was out of control. Suddenly this whole affair was infinitely more serious than it was even an hour ago. Could it be a coincidence that the gun was gone just at the time that someone was killed with something similar enough as to make no difference?
Oh, please, God. Phoebe wasn’t just in danger of a broken heart. She was an accomplice. Maybe worse. No, mustn’t even think that thought. Maybe it was one of the other children. No, why would it be? Besides, that wasn’t any better. She had taken two steps toward the back door, intending to run back out to the soddie and confront John Lee, before she reconsidered and sat down on the bed. If she asked him where he had gotten the gun, and he had gotten it from Phoebe, he would lie. If she asked him where the gun was, he would lie. He would do anything to protect Phoebe, including run away. No, she couldn’t alert him that she knew Phoebe was involved. She was going to have to wait and confront Phoebe herself. If she ran out right now and told Shaw what was happening, he would at the very least rush to the soddie and beat John Lee to a pulp and ask questions later.
And so, she was going to have to wait. Alafair, who seldom wept, began to weep softly with fear and frustration. How could Phoebe, of all people, get mixed up in such a thing? Sweet, gentle Phoebe, so quiet and obedient, so different from the rest of her sassy brood. Yes, she would have to say that, as much as she loved all her children, Phoebe might be her favorite. She stopped crying abruptly and sat up straight on the edge of the bed. Well, there was just no way, that was all. No matter what Phoebe had done, Alafair wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to her while her heart still beat in her body. She stood up and smoothed her hair in the mirror, returned the box to its place in the chiffarobe, then got on with her housework.
Chapter Nine
Alafair was a lioness. She was in her hunting mode, her senses heightened to the point of clairvoyance, waiting and watching for the perfect time to pounce. Her prey, the little doe Phoebe, had no idea she was being stalked, and so when her mother finally went for the kill, she was doomed.
Alafair made her move after supper was cleared away, in that short happy period before bed when the family gathered in the parlor. She managed by some plausible ruse to get Phoebe alone with her out on the enclosed back porch. It was cold, and both women wrapped their shawls around themselves more tightly. But it was private.
“What did you want me for, Ma?” Phoebe asked, her breath fogging in the chilly air. She cast an innocent glance around the porch, looking for some likely task that needed doing.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Alafair began. “Phoebe, you know that John Lee’s dad was shot. What you may not know is that he was killed by a small caliber derringer.”
Phoebe froze as still as a hunted rabbit. She paled so suddenly that it occurred to Alafair that she might faint, but she stood solid and gazed at her mother out of eyes huge with horror. She said nothing.
“Phoebe, where is my little silver pistol that I keep in my chiffarobe?”
Phoebe’s lips parted and a little squeaky sound emerged, but she said nothing intelligible.
Oh, yes, you’re caught now, my dear, Alafair thought. “Did you give my gun to John Lee?” she persisted.
“Mama,” Phoebe managed with a gigantic effort.
“Girl, I’m not your enemy. I want to help you. I want to help John Lee if I can. I know John Lee is holed up in the soddie. I followed you out there the other night. Now, don’t panic,” she interjected quickly, grabbing Phoebe’s arm when it looked as though she might bolt out of sheer inability to think of any other response. “I haven’t told anybody, not even your daddy. Not yet. I talked to John Lee, and he told me his version of what happened. I want to believe him, honey, so I thought I’d see what was what before he turns himself in, and he has to turn himself in, Phoebe. You know it and he knows it, too. Of course, that was before I knew that my pistol is missing. Did you give it to him? And don’t you lie to me, child. I’ll know if you do, and it’ll go worse for you.”
Her horror at being caught out had subsided enough for Phoebe to think, and she was doing just that with manic speed. She knew very well that her mother had some sort of supernatural ability to tell when her children were lying, but she also knew that that ability wasn’t 100 percent. What had John Lee told her? Knowing John Lee, he would have told Alafair as much of the truth as he could without involving Phoebe in it at all. But now her mother knew that Phoebe was involved, though not quite how. Phoebe’s assessment of the situation was done in the twinkling of an eye. To deny knowledge would be stupid, dangerous, and an insult. “Yes, Mama, I took your pistol.”
Alafair said nothing, but Phoebe could feel the heightening of the tension in the atmosphere. “I know it was wrong,” Phoebe continued, “but I felt like I had to help John Lee. Things had got so bad that I was afraid his daddy was going to kill him, and I wanted him to have some protection.”
“Don’t they have their own guns over to the Day place?” Alafair asked. Her voice was crisp to the point of being brittle.
“Yes, but I figured that little gun would be easier to hide, and not make his daddy so mad if he saw it.”
“When did you give him the gun?”
There was the briefest of hesitations before Phoebe answered. A look of fear came into her eyes that made Alafair’s heart constrict. “I took it over there that evening that Mr. Day disappeared.”
“What in heaven’s name were you doing sneaking over there to the Day place?”
“Oh, Mama, I’ve been sneaking over there once a week to see John Lee for the last six months. I love him so much I couldn’t help it. His pa was a monster, Ma. He wouldn’t allow John Lee to court me proper, or come and speak to you and Daddy. He didn’t want him to have a life or any happiness at all.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this,” Alafair asked, aghast, “instead of going behind our backs? Do you know what people will say? Do you know what your daddy will say?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Phoebe protested, suddenly on the verge of tears. “John Lee couldn’t come over here, and I knew you wouldn’t let me see him on the sly, without his folks knowing.”
“That’s certain!”
“But, Ma, I have to see him! I love him. We never did anything wrong. Ma, please, don’t you remember what it’s like?”
For a second, Alafair was struck dumb. She gripped Phoebe’s shoulders in an icy vice, trying to decide whether to comfort her or shake her within an inch of her life.
Did she remember what it was like? Did she remember Shaw Tucker with his h
oney-colored eyes and his lopsided grin? She was seventeen, just the same age as Phoebe was now. She had known of Shaw and all the Tuckers. She had disdained him, and all boys, until that strange day that was burned in her memory like a brand. She had gone with her mother to the drug store in Lone Elm, and while her mother had been replenishing her store of patent medicines, Alafair had noticed a rangy youth watching her from behind the counter.
Now, Alafair had seen boys before, and she had seen handsome boys before, and she had seen handsome boys ogling her before. But on that day, something about this handsome boy ogling her nearly caused her to stagger and catch at her breast as though a mule had kicked her. And Alafair Gunn, who until that moment had regarded all the male race except for her father with the contempt it so richly deserved, had instantly been reduced to an inner helplessness that she would rather have died than shown.
But in Shaw, she had been lucky, and she knew it. Little had he known, but she would have done anything for Shaw; gone against her better judgment, ruined herself, anything rather thanlose him. If Phoebe felt like that about this boy….
Fear gripped her. Alafair had been lucky. Shaw was good. But what of sweet Phoebe, so vulnerable to hurt in a way the other children didn’t seem to be?
Her hands dropped from Phoebe’s shoulders in helpless resignation. “Well, you’re in the soup, now, girl,” Alafair said. “You might as well tell me about it.”
“I went over there Wednesday afternoon. I can get away for an hour or so on Wednesday afternoons, because Martha doesn’t work but half a day and everybody’s home. You don’t usually need me, and if I only do it once a week or so, nobody much notices I’m gone.”
Alafair suddenly remembered an incident of two or three weeks earlier. Had it been on a Wednesday? “Where’s Phoebe?” she had asked the milling crew of kids in the kitchen.