Hobbs prompted as he urged Quin up the steps to the pinewood office. Then he turned to the crowd gathered on Town Square. “Go on about your business and let me do my job.”
Serenaded by mumbling and grumbling from the crowd of saddle tramps, tracklayers and other ne’er-do-wells from the wrong side of the tracks, Quin wobbled into the office. He wasn’t looking forward to camping out on the lumpy cot behind bars. The sooner he convinced Hobbs he was barking up the wrong tree, the better.
Quin removed his hat and directed the marshal’s attention to the stitches on the back of his head. “I didn’t get these brain-scrambling blows from a dead man,” he insisted. “I was hunkered over the would-be informant and I was attacked from my blind side.”
Hobbs spared a cursory glance at the injury as he marched Quin across the office to the back room. He opened the cell door, then gestured for Quin to enter. “How am I supposed to know if the man at the springs clubbed you, then tried to make a getaway with the money before you shot him in the back?”
“Then I would be claiming self-defense against a brutal attack,” Quin said reasonably. “That is not what happened.”
Hobbs narrowed his dark eyes as he shut the barred door with a clank. “Did you shoot the man you hired to set the fire to shut him up permanently? Was he trying to blackmail you?”
“For God’s sake, Hobbs, you heard what Boston, er, Adrianna said. Lightning started the fire at her ranch.”
Hobbs ambled back to his office to hang his bowler hat on the hook by the door. Then he strode to the potbelly stove to pour himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t offer Quin a cup. Apparently, prisoners received no kindness whatsoever.
“What do you know about the dead man at Phantom Springs?” the marshal asked intently as he stood in the doorway.
“I never saw him until the night of Rosa and Lucas’s wedding celebration. He brushed past me on his way to the refreshment table but he didn’t speak or try to draw my attention. Adrianna remembers him vaguely, as well. But we have no idea who he is…was.”
“Yet you claim he knew something about the supposed deaths of your parents?” Hobbs asked skeptically, then sipped his coffee. “Sorry, Cahill, but too many things are going on around here and most of them have to do with you, one way or another. If you are lying to me about this unidentified dead man you are headed straight to court for trial.”
Quin tried not to lose his temper but it was damn hard when he felt miserable and frustrated—to the extreme. Never in his life had he had to work so hard to be believed. These days, his name and reputation counted for nothing and a constant fog of suspicion surrounded him. And damn it, just when he thought he had begun to heal from the remorse and anguish of two years past and move on with his life, another obstacle stood in his path.
Too bad his family wasn’t around to help him bear the burden and uncover the truth, he thought resentfully. His one champion was Boston, and he didn’t want her sucked into the vortex of this exasperating turmoil.
Quin sighed heavily. “Look, Hobbs, I have no reason to lie. I received the note last night and Adrianna and Hiram Butler saw it. They tried to persuade me not to go alone to that rendezvous site with money in hand. They thought I was walking into a trap. Turns out they were right.”
Hobbs came to stand by the cell. “Where is the note?”
“At home.”
“And the money? How much money are we discussing?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
“Two thousand dollars?” Hobbs hooted. “Where’s the money now? Did you exchange it for supposed information?”
His skeptical comment prompted Quin to clench his fists around the iron bars. “Whoever hit me from behind must have taken it. As a precaution, I left it in my saddlebags and went to meet the man who was dead when I arrived.”
“But you didn’t see this second supposed assailant?” Hobbs questioned doubtfully.
“No. When I tried to turn on him after he delivered the first blow to the back of my head he hit me a second time. I blacked out.” Quin waited a beat and decided to twist the truth, in hopes of protecting Boston and convincing Hobbs to believe his side of the story. “I didn’t hear the shot being fired