Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Before he could remove the rat, Carly was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide in her pale face. Freckles he hadn’t noticed before stood out on her nose.

  “You were supposed to stay put, remember?” he asked.

  She just stared at the mess on her pillow.

  He stepped between her and the bed. “Wait in the hall.”

  She blinked, then shook herself. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He moved as she did, keeping between her and the ugliness. “You didn’t do it, why should you clean it up?”

  “Neither did you. Why should you?”

  “I’m used to rats.”

  Slowly she focused on his eyes. “No one could get used to…that.”

  “You’d be surprised. Why don’t you check and see if anything of yours is missing.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “You’re good at giving orders,” she said.

  “Too bad you’re not good at taking them.”

  She gave him a wavering smile, then let out a long breath. “If you really don’t mind handling that”—she gestured at the bed with her chin—“I’ll check my stuff.”

  “I was raised hunting. We cleaned and ate whatever we shot. I don’t mind dealing with this.”

  “Tell me you didn’t eat rats.”

  “I didn’t eat rats,” he said. Not as a kid, anyway. When he’d had advanced training in living off the land, rats were the least repellent thing he’d eaten. If it moves, eat it. If it doesn’t move, eat it before it moves.

  She headed for the old dark dresser that dominated one side of the room. Then she stopped, looking at the deep drawers almost warily.

  “You’re right,” he said. “There could be more.”

  “No, I’ll—”

  He brushed aside her protests, opened each drawer in turn, and patted through the silky stuff, the sweaters, and the jeans. If he enjoyed handling lace thongs more than denim, it didn’t show.

  “All clear,” he said.

  She started through the drawers herself, carefully not watching when he carried the pillow and rat into the hall. A door opened and shut, letting in a rush of cold air. She bit the inside of her cheek and told herself to suck it up; the rat had taken the hit, not her. Better to think about where Dan had learned to be so quiet on his feet, so quick. So dangerous.

  She shivered, hugged her computer close, and decided she should concentrate on finding out if something was missing.

  After a few minutes, the courtyard door opened again and Dan walked into the room. Cold air clung to him like perfume.

  “How does it look so far?” he asked.

  “Nothing missing. I have some expensive electronics—scanner, special cameras, color printer, and other stuff, and they’re still under the bed where I left them.”

  “So this was some sick bastard’s idea of a joke rather than a robbery.”

  “I guess.”

  “You want to call the sheriff?”

  Carly looked at Dan. “Would it do any good?”

  “It would establish a pattern if this, or something like it, happens again.”

  She hesitated. “It would also give the media something to howl about. That wouldn’t make Governor Quintrell happy.”

  “He’s a big boy. He’ll cope.”

  “If it happened to you, would you call the sheriff?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “If it’s a prank, it’s not worth wasting the sheriff’s time. Law enforcement is spread too thin out here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “If it’s a threat,” Dan continued, “it will be made again in some other way no matter how many reports the sheriff files.”

  Her mouth twisted down. “Well, thanks, that sure does makes me feel better.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel better.” His green eyes watched her intently. “Has anything like this happened to you before?”

  “No.”

  “No recently pissed-off boyfriends, jealous lovers, angry clients?”

  “No.”

  “Not even the guy you served with stay-away papers?”

  “Last I heard he was married and living in Texas.”

  “So you believe this has something to do with your work in Taos,” Dan said.

  “I don’t know what I believe.”

  “Then believe this. Whatever Miss Winifred is paying you isn’t worth what it will cost you to earn it.”

  TAOS

  MONDAY NIGHT

  14

  CARLY TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ON THE BUMPY RIDE TO TAOS. SHE just pushed her little SUV to keep pace with Dan’s truck ahead of her. But every time his brake lights flashed red, she saw the rat’s blood smeared across her pillow.

  Whatever Miss Winifred is paying you isn’t worth what it will cost you to earn it.

  With an involuntary shudder, Carly shoved the words and the images out of her mind.

  “Just somebody’s idea of a sick joke.” She clenched her hands on the steering wheel. “That’s all.”

  But no matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t quite believe it. The idea that someone she didn’t know hated her that much was frightening.

  For an instant a small graveyard flared into life, pinned by the lights of Dan’s truck while he turned left. The afterimage on Carly’s eyes was a cascade of white crosses festooned with vivid plastic flowers, bound in ribbons and silence, standing vigil around a fresh mound of dirt and rocks. There was no tarp, no grave gouged out of frozen earth. This burial had been aboveground.

  Brake lights burned in the silvery darkness ahead. Dan’s truck turned right and parked under an old cottonwood. He got out, shut the truck’s door, and waited for Carly’s little white SUV to park nearby. When she got out, she looked doubtfully at the small adobe house. Only one light showed in the window.

  “Did you call ahead?” Carly asked.

  “Yes.” He wondered if Winifred knew how worried Lucia’s husband would be when he discovered Dan had visited his wife. Then Dan wondered if Winifred trusted him not to bug Lucia’s house. After all, it had been Sandovals who ultimately took in his mother when her own mother was murdered.

  “You’re sure Lucia will see me?” Carly asked.

  “She’ll see you,” Dan said neutrally. “She wants to please Miss Winifred.”

  Carly grimaced. “Great. Another reluctant interview.”

  “You don’t have to do it. You could—”

  “Get in my car and go back to where I belong,” she cut in impatiently. She’d heard it all before from him. She didn’t like hearing it any better now. “News bulletin, Mr. Duran. I belong right here, doing my job.”

  “News bulletin, Ms. May. People don’t like outsiders poking into their private affairs.”

  “Oh, bull. People line up to tell me their stories.”

  The wind lifted, swirled. She shivered despite her jacket. At the corner of her eyes, just beyond her vision, she kept seeing reflections of blood gleaming. Yet when she turned quickly there was nothing to see but Dan, looming over her like a stone monument.

  If he hadn’t kept her from a nasty fall down the cellar stairs, she’d be wondering if he’d used one of the rats trapped in the archives to decorate her pillow.

  She shuddered again.

  Dan discovered he didn’t have the heart to see the naïve little busybody shiver when he could make her comfortable. “Come on. Let’s get inside before you freeze.”

  Lucia opened the door as soon as Dan knocked. If rumor was correct, she was some kind of cousin to his mother. Right or wrong, it didn’t matter to him. He didn’t want anything to do with the man who had fathered his mother and abandoned her before she was even born. Sperm donor. Nothing familial. Certainly nothing personal.

  “Come in,” Lucia said. She had the face of a woman whose life had never been easy. “I have coffee, if you like.”

  Dan thanked her and made introductions. He didn’t miss the edgy speculati
on in Lucia’s eyes when she met Carly.

  “Miss Winifred asked me to talk to you,” Lucia said, “but she didn’t say what I was supposed to talk about.”

  “Your family has been in the valley as long as the Castillos and longer than the Quintrells,” Carly said.

  Lucia didn’t say anything.

  Carly searched the other woman’s intent dark eyes and admired the single black braid that lay heavily over one shoulder. Her features were an intriguing mix of Old World Spanish and New World Native American. Her skin was luminous despite the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes and the brackets of unhappiness around her mouth.

  “I’m interested in stories of the old days that were passed down to you by your parents and grandparents,” Carly said, “or pictures you might have of the land and the people generations ago.”

  “Ah, the past,” Lucia said, breathing out in relief. “Sí. Yes. I’m as close to a family historian as the Sandovals have.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Carly’s enthusiasm made Lucia smile for the first time.

  “I’m not organized, you understand,” Lucia said quickly. “I just kept the old pictures and mementos that other family members couldn’t find room for.”

  A sleepy voice came from the back of the house. Lucia answered in Spanish that was as fluent as her English, telling the boy to go back to sleep, everything was fine, his aunt was here to take care of him.

  “Where is his mother?” Dan asked. He didn’t have to ask where the father was. A man who was caught with twenty pounds of Mexican brown heroin spent time in prison, no matter how good his lawyer was.

  Lucia lifted one shoulder. “She went back to Mexico with the girls. The boys stayed. It was what Armando wanted. Perhaps when Eduardo is free again…”

  Carly started to ask a question, caught the slight negative shake of Dan’s head, and made a sound of frustration. She was tired of swallowing questions around him.

  Pretending to search his pockets, Dan leaned down and said very softly in Carly’s ear, “Later.” Then he straightened and said to Lucia, “Miss Winifred asked me to give you this.”

  Lucia took the money. When she saw the size of some of the bills, her eyes widened.

  So did Carly’s. The money had multiplied many times over in Dan’s pocket. There were several hundred dollars now.

  Tears gleamed in Lucia’s eyes for a moment. She tucked the money out of sight, deep in the pocket of her worn jeans. “Miss Winifred is a saint,” she said huskily.

  Dan doubted that, but didn’t say it aloud.

  “Sit, sit,” Lucia said, gesturing toward a clean threadbare couch covered by a colorful weaving. “I will bring the photos and coffee.”

  Carly sat down in the middle of the couch, rested her fingers on the recorder at her waist, and wondered if she should bring up the subject of recording the conversation. The couch cushion next to her sank beneath Dan’s solid weight.

  “Don’t ask to record anything,” he said quietly.

  She jumped. “What are you, a mind reader?”

  “Nothing that fancy. I saw you touching the recorder. And don’t ask about the missing husband and his brother, Eduardo. The brother is doing hard time for selling Mexican brown. The husband, the husband’s father, and his uncles on his father’s side run the smuggling organization that gives Rio Arriba County the highest rate of heroin overdose deaths per capita in the United States.”

  Carly didn’t know what to say. Dan’s words were as disorienting as falling down stairs. Sure, she knew that drugs came up from Mexico into New Mexico, but it wasn’t real to her. It wasn’t something that ordinary people dealt with. She took a slow breath and looked around the room. Nothing showed the kind of wealth she expected from the wife of a man who had a successful heroin smuggling business.

  “This isn’t Armando’s house,” Dan said. “It’s Lucia’s.”

  “Now I know you’re a mind reader.”

  “Just a trained observer with a working knowledge of human psychology,” Dan said. “Drugs equal wealth if you’re selling them, poverty if you’re taking them. Lucia isn’t taking them and doesn’t want to know anything about the heroin business. She lives on her income from working for the Quintrells. Her husband, Armando, lives with her when he feels like it. Right now, he’s probably in Las Trampas bragging to the homeboys over mugs of homemade pulque about how he outwitted the Anglos again.”

  “Armando, the cockfighter?”

  “That’s him. When he’s not smuggling drugs.”

  “Right.” She swallowed and hoped Armando didn’t plan on visiting his wife tonight. “So what is it safe to ask about?”

  “Anything that the statute of limitations has run out on.”

  At first she thought he was joking. Then she realized that he wasn’t.

  “That doesn’t help me,” she said. “I’m a personal historian, not a criminal lawyer.”

  “Thirty years in the past is okay, especially if your recorder is off. Otherwise, I’d go for fifty years. The Sandovals make bad enemies.”

  Carly swallowed her response as Lucia came into the room with two mugs of coffee on a battered tray. She held a large worn manila envelope clamped between her right upper arm and her body.

  “Milk? Sugar?” Lucia asked.

  “Not for me,” Dan said.

  Carly thought about asking for something just to get Lucia out of the room long enough to ask Dan more questions, but didn’t. She really hated sugary or milky coffee. If she asked for it, she’d have to drink it. “No thanks.”

  Lucia put the tray in front of her guests, sat down next to Carly, and grabbed the envelope. It was several inches thick and patched many times with various kinds of tape.

  “It’s been years since I looked at any of these.” Lucia pulled out a sheaf of photos of all sizes. “None of the kids are interested yet. Maybe they’ll never be.” She shrugged. “What will be will be.”

  Carly looked at the weariness on Lucia’s face, in the line of her shoulders. “I appreciate this, but I don’t want to keep you from anything.”

  Sleep, for instance. The woman looked like she could use a few weeks of it, uninterrupted.

  Lucia’s smile was tired and real. “The children are sick. It will pass. I wouldn’t want to disappoint Miss Winifred.”

  “She would understand if—”

  “No, no.” Lucia waved off Carly’s words and began spreading pictures on the coffee table.

  Most of them were school photos, baptisms, marriages, engagements, Quinceaneras—a girl’s coming-out party at fifteen—first babies, funerals, graduations, and formal celebrations. Since they weren’t of members of the Quintrell or Castillo family line, the pictures weren’t much use to Carly. She’d seen many like them; only the names attached to the smiling faces differed. That was one of the things that struck her each time she opened a family’s photo collection—the sameness of the pictures, the singularity of the identities, and the subtle genetic threads weaving it all together. She’d become pretty good at picking out the shape of eyes, smiles, posture, hairlines, bone structure, and the like, as each appeared and reappeared from generation to generation.

  So she smiled and commented on healthy babies, beautiful young girls, and handsome men as picture after picture drifted into her lap.

  “Wait,” Carly said, holding up a faded color photo. “Isn’t that Senator Quintrell on the right?”

  Dan went from half-asleep to full alert.

  “Sí, yes,” Lucia said. “He gave a big party on his ranch the first time he was elected from this district, and every year thereafter. Armando’s grandfather, Mario, was always one of his biggest supporters. The Senator remembered friends.” She flipped through a lapful of pictures. “See, here he is again, at the baptism of Armando’s father, and at Easter mass in the San Geronimo chapel in Taos.”

  Carly looked at all the photos, but reserved special attention for the ones that had been taken at the yearly barbecue. Winifred hadn’t showed
her anything like these. From the clothes and hairdos on the women, the first barbecue had been held in the 1930s. Another photo displayed clothing from the 1970s, platform shoes and unlikely combinations of colors and fabrics. A third photo showed the full-circle skirts, stiff petticoats, and poodle appliqués of the 1950s.

  One of the women—a teenager, actually—tickled Carly’s sense of the familiar. She was certain she’d seen the woman before, or maybe her sister or mother or cousin or aunt or daughter. It was in the way the young woman held herself, the tilt of her chin, the shape of her eyes.

  “Who is this?” Carly asked.

  “The Senator’s daughter, Liza.” Lucia crossed herself. “La pobrecita.”

  Silently Dan willed Carly to put the photo down and keep going.

  She didn’t. She let other photos pile up in her lap while she memorized the young woman in the picture. This was one of the few pictures she’d seen of Senator Quintrell’s second daughter. The wild child. Either the Quintrell collection had been purged after the family threw her out, or else there never had been many photos of the beautiful baby who grew up to be something ugly—clinically diagnosed as a pathological liar, arrested as an alcoholic, a junkie, and a whore.

  Impassively Dan looked at the picture of his grandmother and said not one word.

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  TUESDAY, BEFORE DAWN

  15

  CARLY STRUGGLED OUT OF A NIGHTMARE OF GUTTED RATS AND BLOOD SPURTING IN time to a ringing phone. The phone, at least, was real.

  With a groan she sat up, shivering in the chill air, and tried to remember where she was so she would know where the phone was. The only light in the room came from the moon. Her breath hung in the air. Despite her best efforts, the fire in the little adobe hearth had gone out, leaving the room without heat.

  And the phone was still ringing.

  “Quintrell ranch house,” she said, remembering. “Light switch by the door. Telephone in the hall. Incoming calls only. Wouldn’t want the maids or guests to take advantage, would we?”

  She kicked off the heavy covers and reached the door in two strides. The bare tile floor was icy against her feet. The light switch didn’t work.