Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) Read Online Free PDF Page B

me?”
    “Right. Not so much show as hear.” He punched buttons on the desk phone and hit the speaker button. There was beeping, then a man’s voice.
    “Sorry to call so late, Marshal. It’s been a madhouse out here. And every time I thought to ring you, they’d call me back on the set. Crazy fun but I swear by the time I hit the sack it’s time to get up again. Right, I’m rambling like always. Day before yesterday … no, must’ve been the day before that, I got a call from the studio. The producer says he wants to begin filming right away. I told him no way. That I had to clear it with you first and besides, I couldn’t get a flight out in time. He says I’m either on the set the next morning or they’re giving the part to another actor. You and I both know who he meant.”
    I started to ask but the marshal held up his hand, silencing me.
    “I took a chance you wouldn’t be too sore. How I got to the airport without getting a ticket I’ll never know. Caught a flight to Phoenix and a connecting to LAX. Anyway, I’m calling to let you know I won’t make it to work tonight. Or for a while. Hope that doesn’t jam you up too much.”
    The voice mail ended.
    Buckleberry smiled.
    “Billy the Kid?” I offered.
    “Call came in around the time you said you were in the barn looking at him bleeding to death. Now I’m no expert on television detective shows like you, but it seems to me it’d be hard for a victim to be two places at once unless maybe he was a ghost, which we both know he isn’t.”
    “I don’t know who that is on the phone, but it’s not the man I saw in the hayloft.”
    “Tell you what, son. How ‘bout tomorrow after the buffalo hunt, you and I take a look in that barn to see what we can find. How’s that sound?”
    “Fine. I guess.”
    He opened the top drawer and tossed a silver star onto the desk.
    “Welcome to Deadwood, Deputy Nick Caden.”

CHAPTER FIVE
A GRAVE DISCOVERY ON BOOT HILL
    A t half past eleven the alarm chirped on my phone, jarring me awake. The corner porch light outside my window cast yellow highlights across the ribbed slats of the empty bunk above my head. I sat up, cringing at the sound of creaking bedsprings. In the adjoining room, Dad’s snoring momentarily stopped. I sat silently, legs dangling over the side of the bed. A coyote howled in the distant hills. The light on my phone dimmed just as Dad’s locomotive exhalations resumed. I quickly wedged my feet into my sneakers and thumbed the latch on the window.
    Clouds moved over a crescent moon, snuffing out stars. In the distance a low ridge at the base of the mountain range jutted skyward, forming a dark backdrop against the silhouette ofrooftops and a church steeple. I slipped on my hooded sweatshirt, placed my palms on the windowsill, and swung my legs out, dropping into dense weeds. Unfolding the map from my back pocket, I used my phone’s screen to illuminate the route from our bunkhouse to Boot Hill.
    The marshal’s willingness to deputize me had been a favor to my parents. I could imagine Dad saying, “Humor him, Marshal. The boy’s fourteen and bored.” Regardless of what I did, no matter how many cases I solved
before
the authorities arrested the culprit, my parents still saw my amateur detective work as a hobby and me as their little boy—even if I was almost as tall as Dad.
    When I reached town, I circled around the back of the saloon, taking the route Marshal Buckleberry used on his way to the office. Near a rack of trash bins came the sound of rustling and clanging, but when I peered back, the noise stopped.
Cat? Coyote? Bear?
Moving with more urgency, I followed the back road out of town past adobe huts advertising (in large letters, the misspelling clearly visible in my phone’s lighted screen) AWTHINTIC NATIVE AMERICAN CRAFTS FOR SELL. The road wound around a cluster of large teepees before turning off into a field of scrub brush, cactuses, and small trees. At last I came to a dry