Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) by Adrienne deWolfe Page A

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