Mystery Woman: Wild West Mystery

Samantha Kinsey is in Walden for the town's Wild West Days celebration, where the event is meant to draw tourists and fund the local school. The featured attraction is Clint Lawson, a former TV western star whose presence has turned the event into a major success. From the beginning, however, Clint is more interested in publicity and his own comeback than in the town or its people, and Samantha quickly notices that the show business crowd around him is full of tension. The trouble starts when Clint takes a dramatic fall during the show after his saddle cinch has been cut. The injury looks like an attempted murder, and Samantha helps press the issue with Chief Connors, who begins questioning everyone involved. Dogie Jones, Clint's loyal stand-in and stunt helper, is especially important because he handles switching places with Clint when the star cannot perform. The situation turns deadly when Dogie is shot onstage while wearing Clint's clothes and riding Clint's horse. The entire town assumes Clint was the target, and the police arrest him after a threatening note is found in Dogie's pocket. Samantha and Philby begin peeling back the layers of the case, interviewing show members and learning that nearly everyone has some reason to resent Clint: Annie Boone feels betrayed by him, Jeb Fletcher has money trouble and a criminal past, and Strother Elam is angry, bitter, and hiding business dealings of his own. As Samantha investigates, she discovers that Clint's supposed murder note is actually dialogue copied from an old Red River Days script, written in quotation marks as if it were a line of text. That discovery weakens the case against Clint, but not enough to free him. The clues keep multiplying: Dogie had money problems, he had been acting as a go-between for Clint's gambling debts, and there is evidence that a gun was hidden in Dogie's room along with a rattlesnake, as if someone were protecting it until the right moment. Philby and Samantha then uncover another layer of deception: Strother is running a fake western memorabilia operation with forged signatures and expensive counterfeit collectibles. That scheme explains part of the money trail, but not Dogie's murder. Meanwhile, the investigation reveals that Dogie knew too much about Clint's finances and had something important to tell him. Samantha realizes the killer was likely after Clint, not Dogie, and that Dogie's death happened because he took Clint's place at the wrong moment. At Dogie's memorial service, Samantha uses his cell phone to flush out the caller who was trying to reach him. The trap works: Zeke Foster, an ex-stuntman, is exposed as the man who killed Dogie to protect stolen money and to frame Clint. Zeke confesses that Dogie had been skimming money from Clint for years and that he intended to plant the murder weapon in Clint's trailer. Chief Connors arrests Zeke, Clint is cleared, and the town can finally move on from the murder. In the end, Annie decides to leave Walden and try Hollywood, while Clint makes one last push to win her back. Samantha and Philby close the case having uncovered the lies, greed, and resentment beneath the show's flashy western pageantry, leaving Wild West Days damaged but solved.