Devil in Texas(11)

Cass's smile was smug. No one wanted more than he did to find evidence that Sterne had tarnished the Ranger badge.

Now I have something to live for.

Hauling himself over his enemy's window sill, Cass began to drag the rope back up the wall. "How much time do we have?"

"Tito's good at smashing, not yakking."

"That's why I sent Poppy as back up."

At the mention of Baron's wife, Collie screwed up his face like he'd choked down castor oil. "She'll make Sterne run for the nearest saloon, that's certain."

"Works for me."

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.'"