Hornswoggled - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

  “And then him and Jeff hauled her home, then saw what the Tollands did, and decided to get rid of the body for good and all,” Shaw reiterated. “What does Bond have to say about all this?”

  “Says they never did no such thing, naturally,” Scott told him.

  “So you’re still holding the two youngsters,” Hattie said.

  “Ned and Nellie, too, for interfering with a murder investigation, and tampering with evidence. Fortunately, I’m not the one who has to decide the truth of it.”

  “Where do you think Billy Bond got that fancy bone-handled knife to stab Louise with?” Alafair asked. “That’s an unlikely thing to take to a road house.”

  “That knife is a poser,” Scott admitted. “I’m betting it was Louise’s, though Walter said he’d never seen it. Either she took it to the road house, or somehow or other Bond got hold of it later.”

  “Maybe it belonged to Miz Grant,” Hattie speculated.

  “She denies it, and I searched her house pretty good soon after the murder. She didn’t have any other cutlery like it, and none of her relations admit to ever having seen her with such a knife. No, I don’t think Miz Grant is our killer.”

  “But you still think Walter is completely innocent of the murder,” Alafair said. “Never hired an assassin or anything of the kind?”

  “Completely innocent, Alafair. That’s what I think.”

  “Just because you don’t like a person, Alafair, it doesn’t mean he’s a villain for sure,” Shaw chided. “I think maybe you’ve beat that dead horse plenty.”

  Alafair harumphed and rose to clear the table. She and Hattie left the men to their coffee while they began washing the dishes. Alafair could hear that the kids’ games were coming to an end, and they would all be inside in a few minutes.

  “What are you thinking?” Hattie asked, as she took a dish from Alafair to dry.

  “I don’t like it,” Alafair told her. “Billy doesn’t seem right to have killed Louise in such a mean way, and neither do Nellie and Ned.”

  “Are you saying that Walter Kelley seems right to have done it?”

  Alafair shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not,” she admitted ruefully. “I’m afraid Shaw’s right about that one. I don’t like the man, but I guess that doesn’t just naturally make him a wife-killer.”

  “You think it’s somebody else altogether?”

  “I don’t know, Hattie,” Alafair repeated, troubled. “I just don’t know. I keep thinking about the knife. It is a kitchen knife, and not the kind of outdoor knife a person like Billy Bond would be toting around. Where did that knife come from?”

  “Mercy, Alafair!” Hattie exclaimed. “How much more complicated could this thing get?”

  ***

  Alafair lay Grace in her cradle. The baby had fallen asleep after her evening meal, and she looked the picture of innocence, with her sweet cherry cheeks and her rosy bottom lip pooched out. Alafair brushed her finger along Grace’s chin, and the child’s long black eyelashes quivered. Alafair smiled and turned to go check on the other children as they readied for bed, but paused when she saw Shaw leaning against the bedroom door, watching her.

  “She’s finally asleep,” she said to him.

  But he had something else on his mind. “Before him and Hattie left, Scott told me that you and Ma tried to get in to see the Bond boy at the jailhouse a while back.”

  Alafair nodded. She didn’t see any reason to deny that part of it. After all, Scott didn’t know the whole story. “We did. Trent wasn’t having it, though.”

  “You’re starting to worry me, Alafair, how you keep picking at this like a scab. What are you trying to do? Are you out to do anything to discredit the barber so Alice will take against him?”

  Alafair straightened, taken aback and a little bit insulted that he would see it that way. However, to be fair, she took a moment to consider if there was anything to what he was saying. “I don’t know any more, Shaw,” she admitted at length. “At first, I only wanted to know for sure that Walter didn’t kill his wife, to protect Alice. I’m still wishing she’d cast her affections elsewhere. I want my girls to marry constant men, and I don’t think Walter is. But now, I want to find out who did kill Louise.”

  “And you don’t think it was Billy Bond?”

  “I’m not convinced, no.”

  “Why not?”

  Alafair swallowed. She wasn’t about to tell him about her jailhouse escapade. “It just don’t smell right,” she said at last.

  “And you think you know better than Scott?”

  She extended her hands, palms out, in a gesture of bafflement. “What can I say? I feel like…I feel like Louise is trying to tell me something. That there’s something everybody is overlooking. I’ve been thinking that maybe Louise had a regular lover that no one knew about. Maybe this secret lover saw Louise with the Bond boy and killed her in a jealous fit. You know, Georgie Welsh told me she heard that Mr. Grant was all broke up after Louise died. Could he have had something to do with it? He was at home that night.

  “And what about Wanda Grant? As soon as Louise died, Wanda conceived a notion that Walter would be a good husband for her daughter. Could she have conceived that notion before Louise died? Besides, it seems mighty strange to me that with all the goings on at the Kelley house that night, nobody at the Grants’ heard a thing. Maybe I should try to go and talk to him…”

  “No, Alafair!” Shaw interrupted, and she bit off her sentence, shocked at his tone.

  Usually Shaw greeted Alafair’s bursts of intuition with a mix of amusement and admiration. She was often right about the unlikeliest things. But something about her bulldog tenacity on this subject filled him with alarm.

  “Leave it alone,” he continued, firm, but subdued, trying not to disturb the baby. “You’re just driving yourself and everybody else to distraction over this, and for no good reason that I can see. Now, just drop it and mind your own business.”

  He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he had put it badly, and he was going to have to pay. Alafair fell quiet, and the resentment in her eyes bored hot holes in him as he stood there. For a moment, the only sound Shaw was aware of was the roar of his own blood in his ears. Still…

  “I don’t want you bothering Mr. Grant, now,” he said, more gently.

  “I hear you,” she replied, curt.

  He knew he was going to endure a few days of frosty silence, but he considered Alafair’s safety worth it. Her heart is in the right place, God knows, he thought, but whenever one of the kids is concerned, she rushes headlong into situations without thinking about what could happen to her. He could tell there was no point trying to iron it out now. He nodded and left the room.

  Alafair sat down in her rocker, indignant at being ordered about, and hurt that he couldn’t understand her concern. She started to rock as she mapped out her plan to talk to Grant.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Saturday, two days after May Day, Alafair and the younger kids joined Shaw and Gee Dub on their trip into town to buy ice for the ice box. Shaw stopped in the middle of Main Street to drop off Alafair and Grace for an hour of window shopping, and Charlie, Sophronia, and Blanche for a trip to the drugstore for a treat. Alafair stood on the sidewalk with Grace in her arms and watched, amused, as the kids clambered around their father. He dug into his pocket and produced three nickels, leaned down from the driver’s seat, and pressed one into each greedy palm. “A licorice whip for me,” Sophronia cried.

  “Be careful how you spend it, now,” Shaw warned. “That’s all you’re getting.”

  Alafair grabbed Charlie’s arm as he raced past her on the sidewalk. “Watch your sisters,” she admonished.

  Charlie’s blue eyes registered only mild annoyance at the delay before he accepted his charge. “I will, Ma,” he assured her, then sped away before the girls could get too far ahead of him.

  “This shouldn’t take long, hon,” Shaw said to Alafair. She nodded, and he eyed her critically
for a minute. She seemed to have gotten over in record time his stern warning not to involve herself in risky enterprises. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or suspicious. “We’ll pick you up right here in an hour or so.”

  “Go along, then. Me and Grace intend to have a good time.”

  Gee Dub gave her a lazy wave from the back of the wagon as it rumbled away toward the ice house.

  She stood there with the baby in her arms, going nowhere, for quite a while, until the buckboard was completely out of sight. Then Alafair hitched up the baby on her hip and made her way through the horses, wagons, automobiles, and pedestrians to cross Main Street. She walked up the sidewalk to a tall green door which was wedged between the Boynton Mercantile and the O R Clothing Shop. She walked in to a small foyer and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where she found herself in a long hall with two doors on either side. On her right, the door to the offices of Abner L. Meriwether, Attorney-at-law, stood open.

  The frosted glass pane in the door immediately to her left proclaimed in gold leaf that this was the location of the Muskogee Tool Company, Boynton Branch, Office of D.C. Grant. She stood and looked at the closed door for a couple of minutes, suddenly feeling not quite so sure of herself. What if Grant had been involved in Louise’s murder? Was she going to walk through that office door, never to be seen again? Maybe Shaw was right, and she should mind her own business.

  Even as the thought arose, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t easy for her to arrange opportunities like this one, and she wasn’t about to let it pass.

  However, she wasn’t willing to expose Grace to possible danger. She turned her head and gazed thoughtfully through the open door of Lawyer Meriwether’s office.

  Alafair could see a young man in shirtsleeves and a red bow tie, sitting at a desk. The wall behind him was lined floor to ceiling with law books. When he felt her eyes on him, the man looked up.

  He stood and reached for his suit coat, which was draped over the back of his chair, and began to jam his arms into the sleeves. “Good morning,” he greeted, with a pleasant smile. “May I help you?”

  She smiled back and stepped through the door. “Morning. Is Mr. Meriwether in today?”

  Before the clerk could reply, the door to the inner office swung open and Mr. Abner L. Meriwether himself appeared.

  Meriwether was a big, meaty man with a glowing bald head and a giant toothy smile. He was wearing the waistcoat and trousers of a gray three-piece suit. A gold watch chain draped across his ample stomach.

  “Why, Miz Tucker, I thought I recognized your voice!” he greeted. “Whatever can I do for you?”

  Abner Meriwether had been a friend of Alafair’s family for many years, ever since he had been coaxed to leave Texas and move to Indian Territory to act as council for the Cherokee Nation. He handled all the Tucker legal business—tribal deeds, land deals, wills, even the occasional criminal matter, as needed. Alafair was friendly with his wife, and her children played with his children. And she knew he had a soft spot for little babies.

  “Good morning, Mr. Meriwether. I have a bit of a favor to ask of you.”

  Grace gurgled and reached for the clerk’s intriguing red tie, and Alafair shifted her to the other arm. The man grinned and offered the baby his index finger in recompense, which she grasped and immediately tried to chew. Mr. Red Bow Tie wriggled his finger under her chin and she chortled. Meriwether laughed, and Alafair breathed a prayer of gratitude that Grace was being so helpfully charming, as opposed to screaming like a banshee.

  She plunged ahead before the baby’s volatile emotional weather changed. “I have a little business with Mr. Grant at the tool company across the hall. Shouldn’t take me but a few minutes, but I’m loathe to take Grace in with me.”

  Meriwether folded his hands over his girth and smiled. “Yes, it’s hard to wrangle a youngster and observe the social graces at the same time,” he agreed. “So you were wondering if you could contract for a bit of baby-watching while you conduct your business.”

  “Well, I thought I’d ask, if y’all ain’t too busy right now. It’s mighty bold of me, I know, but she’s such a squirmer. It’ll take me twice as long to deliver my message to Mr. Grant if she’s on my arm.”

  Meriwether turned to Mr. Red Bow Tie. “Well, Bud, how are you coming with that oil rights contract?”

  “I’m ready for a break, Mr. Meriwether.”

  The lawyer turned back toward Alafair and held out his arms. “All right, then, Miz Tucker. If Miss Grace doesn’t mind, then I expect we could benefit from her company for a few minutes.”

  Alafair left Grace sitting on Bud’s desk, playing with Meriwether’s gold watch and fob. She was secure in the knowledge that Grace was safe, and that someone knew her own whereabouts as well.

  She knocked on the door of the Muskogee Tool Company, and entered.

  ***

  Mr. Grant looked up at her from his seat behind a large, paper-strewn oak desk which sat right in the middle of the office, facing the door. The Tool Company office was smaller than Mr. Meriwether’s, only one room. But it was brighter than Bud’s dark, book lined space, due to the tall windows that lined two walls. The windows were all open to admit a pleasant cross-breeze. Shiny hand tools on the shelves to Grant’s right served both as bookends and samples for prospective customers.

  Like Meriwether and Bud the law clerk, Grant was in his shirtsleeves. He had removed his celluloid collar and unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt. He obviously had not been expecting much walk-in business today.

  He blinked at Alafair when she stepped in. There was no look of recognition on his eyes when he smiled at her. He buttoned his shirt, reached for his collar, and stood. “Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Alafair looked him up and down as he arranged his collar around his neck and fastened the studs. Grant wasn’t a bad looking man; about her age, late thirties, early forties. He wasn’t as tall and robust as Shaw, but he was better than medium height and by no means scrawny. He had been shaved close around his ears and the back of his head, while the sandy hair on top was thick and fairly long. He had attempted to comb it straight back from his forehead, but it seemed to want to resist the pomade he had slicked over it, and stood up straight from his crown, like he had had a bad scare. Alafair found herself wondering if Walter Kelley had given him that haircut. Grant’s clear blue-gray eyes were gazing at her expectantly as he rolled down his shirtsleeves.

  “Mr. Grant,” she opened, “I’m Alafair Tucker. You and me met a while back, at Walter Kelley’s house, when the sheriff rousted y’all from your supper to see if you knew anything about a bloody rug.”

  Grant’s hand froze in the act of replacing his cufflink. The strangest series of expressions passed over his face. Bafflement, then enlightenment. Dismay. Resignation. The weight of the world. He smiled; a gentle smile, Alafair thought.

  “Where are my manners, Miz Tucker,” he said. “Yes, I remember you. Please, sit down. I made coffee this morning. I’d be pleased to offer you some, such as it is. It’s still hot.”

  “No, thank you, sir. I don’t intend to disturb you long.” Alafair walked over to the chair Grant had indicated, but didn’t sit, in case she needed to make a quick getaway. Since she remained standing, Grant did likewise.

  “Are you here to talk about the murder of Louise Kelley?” he asked her.

  Now it was Alafair’s turn to be surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I know of your interest in the matter, ma’am.” A wry look flitted over his face. “And I can’t imagine that you’re here looking to buy tools.”

  Alafair had expected to have to dance around the topic for a spell. Well, if he was going to be so direct… “Yes, sir,” she admitted. “I have some questions about Miz Kelley’s death.”

  “I don’t know what you expect I can tell you that I didn’t tell the sheriff, Miz Tucker. It was a most unfortunate thing that happened to that poor woman
. I must say that after all this time, I’ve forgotten much of the little I did remember about that night. I’ve tried to put the whole incident out of my mind, if you want to know. It ain’t my favorite thing to think about.”

  “You liked Miz Kelley?”

  “I hardly knew Miz Kelley, but she seemed pleasant enough to me.”

  “Did you like Mr. Kelley, as well?”

  “Everybody likes Walter,” Grant told her. “And he’s a good neighbor.”

  “Miz Grant is especially fond of him, I hear…”

  Grant’s expression closed down instantly, and he abruptly moved from behind his desk to stare out the window at the street. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Miz Tucker, I don’t know what you…”

  “Mr. Grant,” she interrupted, “please forgive me. I know you don’t have to talk to me. I know it ain’t my business to be nosing around like this, asking about such unpleasant things. Certainly everyone with a lick of sense tells me so. But I have reasons to want to know who killed Miz Kelley. I won’t bore you with them, but…”

  “Yes, I know your reasons, ma’am,” he said, without looking at her. “I have similar reasons.”

  There was an instant of silence before Alafair blurted, “Your daughter?”

  Grant looked back at her over his shoulder, but didn’t reply.

  Alafair sat down. “Are you saying that your daughter is somehow involved, sir?”

  Grant looked shocked, as though he hadn’t realized how his statement might be interpreted. “No, no,” he hastened to assure her. “It’s just that my Susan always liked Walter Kelley. My wife is convinced that Susan and Walter are meant for each other. She’s been on a mission to get those two together since the day Miz Kelley died.”

  “Even considering all the talk about the state of his first marriage?”

  Grant emitted a humorless chuckle. “Wanda puts all the blame for those troubles square on the shoulders of the late Miz Kelley. As for Walter, he’s rich, he’s good-looking, and he lives right next door. As far as Wanda is concerned, there couldn’t be a better match for our only child.”