Rides a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

twenty and then go back and do number nineteen later. And guess what?”
    “What?” Mom asked.
    “They never did,” Hyland said. “They printed number twenty, and then Woodworth Books folded their tents and went out of business. Number nineteen was never given a full print run.”
    “How many were printed?” I asked.
    “Lou Caledonia guesses they printed about fifty. Fifty cheap paperback books were printed about forty years ago. Understandably, not very many of those fifty are still around. Some went to libraries and got worn out. Some were sold in a few places. But mostly they’re gone. The book itself, your dad’s book, isn’t that valuable in and of itself. You see, it’s the set of all twenty Monarchs that would be the real prize. Lots of people have managed to collect the nineteen mass produced titles, but to find a set with all twenty … well, that’s a rare thing. And one of those sets is worth thousands of dollars on the collector’s market.”
    “He didn’t write the book,” Mom said.
    “Why is this set worth so much?” I asked. “I mean, who cares about twenty old western paperbacks? Aren’t they a dime a dozen?”
    Hyland flipped his notebook shut. “You would think that, wouldn’t you? Except there’s one catch with this Monarch Series. Number eight in the series is a book called The Midnight Guns. It was written by someone named T.J. Tucker.”
    Hyland looked at both of us as though the name should mean something to us. It didn’t.
    “What’s so special about a guy named T.J. Tucker?” I asked.
    “T.J. Tucker isn’t a guy,” Hyland said. “T.J. Tucker is a woman who wrote under a pseudonym. I guess they figured men were more likely to buy a western, and they wouldn’t buy a western if it was written by a woman. That was her first book, and she never published another western. Her real name is Tonya Jane Hood. You know who that is, right?”
    “It sounds familiar,” I said.
    “Are you shitting me?” Mom said.
    “I’m not,” Hyland said.
    I looked at Mom. “Who is this?”
    “Tonya Jane Hood,” Mom said. “She writes the Glitter Blood series. You know, the books, the movies, the TV show. Glitter Blood. I read all of them.”
    “That’s right,” Hyland said. “The Hood novel is very desirable, but they printed close to one hundred thousand copies of that one. And when you combine the desirability of Hood with the rarity of Henry you get a valuable series. Very valuable. Maybe even worth killing over.”
    “This is ridiculous,” Mom said. “My husband died. We buried him today. I don’t want to hear this crazy stuff about these books. It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
    I held out my hand, hoping to calm down Mom a little bit. But I didn’t disagree with her.
    “Detective,” I said. “Lou Caledonia seemed like an odd guy. So he thought my dad wrote a book, a rare book. What’s his evidence for this? The whole thing seems kind of far-fetched.”
    “You may be right,” Hyland said. “Maybe Caledonia’s death was just a robbery gone wrong. Maybe he was dreaming when he thought your father wrote this book. But there is the middle name. There’s the fact that, according to the biography in the book Rides a Stranger , the author of the book lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.”
    I said, “Lots of people named Henry live in Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s a big city.”
    “True,” Hyland said. “Very true.”
    A silence settled between us. No one said anything. Hyland looked lost in thought for a moment, as though contemplating whether or not he wanted to say anything else. Finally, he just stood up. “Perhaps I’m just fishing.”
    Mom and I stood up as well, and Hyland nodded to us. He shook my hand.
    “Do accept my sympathies,” he said. “If you think of anything else that’s relevant, just give me a call.”
    He let himself out.
    When Hyland was gone, Mom started puttering around in the kitchen. She scrubbed the countertops and rattled dishes into the