Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (8 page)

Cass tugged the bandanna off his face. His eyes swept over oblong shapes, like a bed and a shaving stand, while his nose singled out lemon-balm hair tonic and something more ominous:
sulfur.
"You been burning powder?" he demanded, his right hand straying to his trigger guard.

"I didn't shoot nobody, if that's what you mean."

"Tarnation, boy! You're supposed to be a
girl.
Girls don't fire guns while they're wearing widow's weeds! You want to wake every dang body in this hotel?"

"A coyote was chasing my coon!"

Cass groaned, spying the hump-with-a-tail that had nested on Sterne's pillow and was happily gnawing his badger-hair shaving brush. Sometimes, Cass didn't know which was the bigger liability: the kid or his coon.

They began ransacking the room, tossing chair cushions, dumping drawers, and turning the mattress. Cass rummaged through the campaign propaganda in Sterne's smaller traveling trunk, while Collie pawed through the change of clothing in the larger portmanteau. Vandy proved his worth by galloping merrily around the chaos with Sterne's underwear on his head.

"I hate politics," Collie grumbled, shaking out a box of red, white, and blue ribbons.

"You hate following orders," Cass corrected him.

"And you don't?"

"Listen here, smartass. I've been trying to keep you from screwing up the way I did and living your life on the run. 'Sides. A Ranger needs to care about folks. So he can protect them."

"Caring is your
problem,
Snake Bait. You got your head so messed up over that lying little snitch—"

"Don't be speaking ill of my Sadie!"

Collie sighed and shook his head. "Ten minutes before that brothel fire, all you could talk about was how she sold you out to the law."

"Yeah?" Cass squared his jaw. "Well, you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. Unless the corpse is Sterne's," he added darkly, rummaging through the trash. "Considering how he carried on with Sadie in Dodge, you'd think Sterne would have cared how she died. But as far as I can tell, the Rangers didn't lift a finger to stop Dietrich from fleeing town. He disappeared as thoroughly as a shadow at high noon."

Collie grunted. "I got one word for you: Pendleton."

"What about Pendleton?"

"The way I see it, Dietrich was just a goon, doing the heavy lifting.
Pendleton
was the brains behind the insurance swindle."

Cass snorted. "How do you figure that, Kid Detective?"

"Remember that nimrod sodbuster? The one we first saw on Post Office Street? He was drinking cherry fizzy pop. That's Pendleton's favorite."

"Wait a minute." Cass frowned. "You got a good look at that granger, and you're only saying so
now?"

"Not a
good
look. Hell, he was wearing a
porcupine
on his face! But under all those bristly whiskers, he was the same size and weight as Pendleton. My guess is, Pendleton disguised himself so he could watch Dietrich and Randie carry out his plan."

"Aren't you forgetting something? Baron signed his name to an affidavit, giving Randie her alibi."

"Oh, right. Like Randie was
really
pouring Baron a drink in that back room."

"What Randie and Baron were doing at the time of the explosion is irrelevant. They gave each other alibis. And Pendleton was asleep in his hotel."

"So he says," Collie said snidely. "But that ain't much of an alibi."

"
Isn't
much of an alibi."

"That's what I said!"

Cass rolled his eyes, mostly at Collie's grammar
.

Pendleton was a tad Puritanical, true, but Cass couldn't picture the fussbudget burning a cathouse to the ground just because he disapproved of lechery. Pendleton got paid plenty to manage Baron's books. Considering the way he pinched pennies, he'd probably accrued a small fortune in some bank account. With all that money, why would Pendleton risk a capital murder charge to burn an occupied building?

"Fess up, Collie. The only reason you suspect Pendleton of arson is because he accused Vandy of stealing his pocket watch last night."

"Shows you how much
you
know." Collie hiked his chin. "I've always suspected Pendleton. And coons like shiny things. Vandy was only doing what comes natural."

"You mean what comes natural in the
wild."
Cass smirked, recalling the uproar at Baron's ranch. Vandy, masked rascal that he was, had dunked Pendleton's heirloom timepiece in Poppy's bathtub—while she was in it.

"Wanting
Pendleton to be an insurance swindler doesn't mean he is one," Cass reminded the kid. "Pendleton has been managing Baron's business affairs for 20 years. His record's as lily-white as that milk potion he keeps rubbing into his hands."

"Big deal. He just hasn't been caught yet. I'll bet Baron's attorney is part of the conspiracy. Poppy too."

"Tarnation, boy! Do you trust
anybody?"

"Nope."

Cass grabbed Sterne's fancy, silver flask. He'd intended to throw it at the kid until he realized the flask was a quarter full.

Well, damn.

Cass screwed off the lid.

So this is what prissy scotch smells like?

He gulped the imported, Irish whisky like the White Trash he was, smiled with perverse pleasure, then hurled the flask at the kid.

"Hey!" Collie caught the vessel with viper-fast reflexes. "You might have saved me some!"

Cass belched and grinned. "Naw. Wouldn't want to undermine all that good religion you got while living with Sera and Doc Jones."

"Bite me."

Vandy, meanwhile, was gleefully tracking cigar ash all over the hotel's plush, Aubusson carpet.

Cass muttered an oath. "Heel! Sit! Confound it. That varmint never listens to me."

"'Course he doesn't listen to you. You don't speak his language.
Candytuft,"
Collie
barked at the coon.

Instantly contrite, Vandy retreated under the bed, dropping his snout to his paws and raising beseeching eyes to his boy.

"Stop being such a baby," Collie scolded.

Vandy growled.

"That's more like it," Collie growled back.

"Lord aw'mighty," Cass groused. "Why can't you just say, 'lie down,' or 'play dead,' like normal folks?"

"'Cause Vandy knows
candytuft
and
grubroot
."

"Well, sure! Those words sound like food!"

The commands Collie had invented to control Vandy were supposed to be Kentucky wildflowers, but half the time, Collie's "secret coon code" sounded like gibberish to Cass. The kid claimed he'd concocted the cipher so Vandy wouldn't get tricked into becoming a hat. The truth was, Collie was the jealous type, who didn't want Vandy loving anyone more than him. Cass had learned the hard way: Don't come between Collie and his coon, and don't talk flowers around Vandy.
Especially
pansies. Pansies earned you a whole lot of fangs in the face.

Planting his fists on his hips, Cass glowered at the coon's tracks, spreading out in all their circular paths of destruction. "Seems like you could've saved Vandy a whole lot of trouble if you'd just whitewashed the mirror with
'Cass and Collie were here.'
"

"You mean,
Collie
and Cass," the boy retorted, squatting to retrieve a mostly burned scrap of paper from Vandy's mouth. "Looks like he found something."

"Yeah. An ashtray."

"This isn't cig paper." Collie tilted the scrap to catch the moonlight. "There's a symbol here. Looks like a backwards seven with a boot. The words are mostly blacked out."

Cass joined him by the window. "Let's see."

Sure enough, a neatly lettered scrawl had been all but obliterated by Sterne's match. To Cass's mind, the remaining scrap looked like it had been part of the bottom, right-hand corner of the message:
'Trouble... arrived... meet here MN.'
The 'MN' was probably shorthand for midnight. But the backwards seven reminded Cass of a musical symbol that Sadie used to write.

"I think the seven is part of a signature," Cass said thoughtfully.

Collie grunted. "A code name?"

"Maybe. What time is it?"

Collie glanced out the window, calculating by the position of the moon. "Midnight, I reckon."

"Damn. If that rendezvous's tonight, Sterne's on his way to this room. We're out of time."

Cass cracked open the hall door. He wanted to make sure no one would witness two vandals and a varmint hotfooting it down the hall.

Gold velvet
fleurs-de-lis
decorated the rich, burgundy wallpaper, which shimmered in the flickers of the frosted sconces. The matching reds of the carpet amplified the illusion that he'd stepped inside the belly of a dragon. Or maybe a long furnace. The heat of Texas's ongoing drought was barely relieved by the languid breeze that stirred the draperies, framing the windows at each end of the corridor. It wasn't difficult for Cass to imagine himself headed down the road to Hell.

But then, a life like his didn't usually end with an invitation to join the saints.

"All right, the hall's clear," Cass said.

He stepped across the threshold while Collie rummaged between his watermelons, presumably to reposition his .38.

"Quit messing around in there!" Cass grabbed the boy's arm and dragged him toward the L-shaped bend that led to the stairs. "And hunch your shoulders. You're supposed to be a doddering old Mee-Maw. How come you're waddling like a pregnant duck?"

"I don't want to step on Vandy's tail!"

A whiskered snout was poking out from under Collie's hem.

"Honest to God, I can't take you any—"

A muffled thump reached Cass's ears. It was followed by a suspicious scuffling.

Collie cocked his head, a sure sign he was listening.
"Window,"
he mouthed silently.

Cass nodded, removing the trigger guards from his .45s. He'd learned to trust Collie's weasel ears. The kid's sense of hearing would have been downright legendary if he hadn't considered it one of his greatest weapons—and therefore, his biggest secret.

"Stay here," Cass whispered, edging along the wall.

When he poked his head around the corner, he spied a figure with chestnut sideburns. Dressed in a sodbuster's bowler and a brown linen sack suit, the man was emerging from the hardy camouflage of a live oak and swinging a leg over the window sill. A perverse sense of amusement curved Cass's lips. He'd caught a thief breaking into the hotel.

All his life, he'd wanted to be a Ranger. To fight for right. To make the world a safe place for little kiddies to play. That altruistic side couldn't let some desperado barge into the hotel and loot innocent folks.

Cass waited until the thief had committed himself, swinging his second leg over the sill and landing on catlike feet. Only then did Cass swagger around the corner.

"What's the matter, mister? Stairs aren't enough exercise?"

The thief caught his breath, his body going rigid. Cass had a revolver in his fist before the man could think about his own weapons.

"Hands," Cass barked.

Slowly, reluctantly, the thief spread his gloves in the universal sign of surrender. His demeanor was docile enough, but the rapid flutter of the linen draping his chest betrayed his agitation. The globe of an oil lamp burned behind his shoulders, so Cass couldn't see the intruder's eyes beneath the shadows of his hat.

"Not your lucky day, eh,
compadre?
I'm thinking your guardian angel up and skedaddled."

"I'll frisk him," Collie volunteered, lurching around the corner like Frankenstein's monster, thanks to the 50-pound coon cavorting between his boots.

Cass had half a mind to wallop them both. "Confound it,
Miss McAffee,
is that how your mama taught a lady to behave?"

The thief chuckled, a low, husky sound that reminded Cass of whiskey, scarlet, and sin all rolled into one.

"Looks like McAffee found Admiral Farragut's lost torpedoes."

"Shut up," Collie said.

"Mind your manners, cockroach," Cass growled at the thief. "You're talking to a lady."

Straight white teeth flashed in that graying beard. "Somebody's got his facts all tangled."

Cass frowned. Something about the thief's voice wasn't right. For one thing, it wasn't scratchy enough to be old. For another, it was more contralto than tenor.

In fact, the more Cass studied his captive, the more things didn't add up. The thief's graying, auburn hair and sideburns suggested a man past his prime, yet the intruder's gloves and boots were far from man-sized; his shoulders were as slender as a girl's; and his baggy coat made the average sack suit look tailored.

Cass took a step forward. He couldn't tell from the drape of the linen if the thief wore a six-shooter strapped to his hip, but Cass wouldn't have bet against those odds. Besides, a .45 wasn't his only danger. Knives, blinding powders, knuckle dusters and all manner of other weapons could be hidden up a man's sleeve—including a one-shot derringer that was just as deadly as a Peacemaker at close range.