Free Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) by Eddie Jones Page B

steps, I circled around to the other side of the train, confident I’d find the comic resting from and reflecting upon his performance.
    I didn’t. What I saw instead chilled me. Nearly three hundred yards away, just visible above the bushy tops of a grove of scrub trees, I spied a series of low mounds cloaked in a silver mist. Wispy tendrils of vapor coiled upwards, swirling and swaying like dead spirits dancing.
    The Native American burial grounds. Right where Wyatt Earp said they would be. And someone—no
, something—
is waving to me. Cowboy comic? Dead farmer? Billy the Kid?
    The train whistle blew. The conductor ordered us back to our seats.
    “Come on, Nick!” Mom yelled out the window to me.
    The train started to move. Jogging toward the caboose, I swung myself up and stood watching as the wispy figures melted away.
    I shoved my hand into my pocket, felt something, and pulled out … a lead slug.

CHAPTER TEN
A KILLER IDEA
    I sat on my seat examining the slug.
Who dropped this in my pocket? Guffaw when he bumped me from behind exiting the train? Annie snuggling up to me? A ghost?
I shoved the slug back into my pocket, deciding to keep it a secret for now.
    As soon as the Big Sky reached the station, I bounded down the steps and went in search of James. If what the old security guard said was true, James might have a motive for killing the young actor, Bill Bell.
    I found James sitting on a fence rail chewing on a strand of straw. Red and white checkerboard shirt, brown leather cowboy chaps over blue dungarees. Cowboy hat tipped forward, shielding dark eyes from the high-noon glare. In the circularcorral behind James, a rodeo clown bobbed and weaved away from a very large Brahma bull. I approached James, but before I could say a word, he hopped down, gave me a firm handshake, and whacked me on the back like we were best buds.
    “Heard you might want to talk to me. Caden, was it? The boy-wonder detective?”
    Up close his sun-browned face showed his youth. Black hair lay matted against his forehead. Late teens, early twenties.
    He released my hand but maintained his smile. “Marshal said you might have some questions for me. So how can I help you, Deputy?”
    I said, “You can start by dropping the act.”
    “Act?”
    “I could ask you where you were last night around midnight, but let’s save that for later. First, I want to know if you hit Annie.”
    “I’m not following you, partner.”
    I explained how I’d found the marshal’s niece visibly shaken earlier that morning and how, when pressed about the incident, she refused to elaborate.
    “I don’t rightly know how to respond to that,” James said. “I’ve been here all morning breaking these mustangs. Or I should say, they’ve been breaking me. Haven’t seen Annie since last night in the saloon and only then for a moment. Is this about Bill?”
    Trying to appear taller, I squared my shoulders and stopped slouching. “I understand you two weren’t on the best of terms.”
    “I didn’t hear a question in that.”
    “Did you and Billy get along?”
    “
Do
get along. Yeah, sure. We get along. At least I think so. Why, you hear differently?”
    “But weren’t you both auditioning for the same movie?”
    “You’re making that sound a lot more interesting than it was. I was disappointed I didn’t get the part, sure. Bill’s a good actor. We both took a shot, and he won. Happy for him. ‘Sides, he knows all the right people out there. Me? I’m just a struggling actor working on his craft and hoping to catch a break. Getting that part would have been huge but there’ll be other roles.”
    “But with him out of the way, they might take a second look at you, right?”
    “Out of the way? You lost me.”
    “I mean dead.”
    “Oh, right. ‘Cause as far as you’re concerned that’s what he is. Fact is, Bill’s in L.A. ‘Least that’s what I hear.”
    “So you deny killing him?”
    “You know, for a boy trying to get answers from