Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Please give Ms. Dykstra a card for the governor’s appointment secretary,” Anne said to the man. She turned to the TV journalist and held out her hand. “A pleasure meeting you. If I can help you in any way, don’t hesitate to call.”

  Anne kept her game face on until the bodyguard showed Dykstra out. Then she turned and walked quickly toward the governor’s home office. She knocked lightly and pushed the door open without waiting for an invitation.

  “Josh, we’ve got a problem.”

  TAOS

  LATE TUESDAY NIGHT

  25

  DAN GLANCED AROUND HIS RENTAL HOUSE. IT LOOKED LIKE A PHOTOGRAPHIC archive after a tornado. Piles of pictures were everywhere—table, chairs, bed, dresser, leaning against the wall, and all over the floor.

  “Okay,” Carly said. She peeled off her slightly dusty cotton gloves and pulled on a clean pair. “Normally I’d go over all these in detail with Winifred first, but she wasn’t interested in any photo that had anyone except a Castillo in it.”

  Winifred’s illness, which had severely limited the interviews, was bad enough. But her stubborn determination to ignore the Quintrells, Sandovals, and everyone else not a Castillo was making Carly’s work a lot harder than it had to be. No matter what Winifred’s prejudice dictated, the families were all deeply intertwined. Leaving out such important connections would gut the family history.

  You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, Carly reminded herself.

  She didn’t think that digging up a list of the Senator’s bastards made up for otherwise ignoring the Quintrells. Especially as the list of his lovers was as long as her arm. When the Senator hadn’t been in Santa Fe or Washington, D.C., he must have been shagging everything female in Taos County. It gave Carly a whole new slant on the disease called satyriasis.

  “Let’s see what we have,” she said.

  “A disaster, that’s what.” Dan gestured to the papers everywhere. “I’ll have to rig hammocks for us to sleep in.”

  She grinned. “You rig them, I’ll fill them with photos.”

  “You would, too.”

  “You bet. This is the messiest part of the job, and in some ways the most important.”

  He shook his head, but he was almost smiling. He’d enjoyed watching Carly’s concentration as she went through envelope after envelope of Winifred’s photos and decided on a probable date for each image. The much smaller group of Sandoval photos had been set out on the card table.

  When he wasn’t enjoying the view, he was running the names on Winifred’s list through his memory bank and that of the newspaper. Trying to take the times the Senator—at whatever age—had been home to diddle the locals and matching those times against the online birth registry nine or ten months later was like a logic problem.

  He enjoyed it.

  “We’ll start with the daguerreotypes,” she said. “Unless I see something that doesn’t fit, I’ll assume that the dags are no earlier than 1840 and probably no later than 1860.”

  “Why?”

  “Daguerre patented the process of photography on metal in 1840. By 1860, ambrotypes and tintypes largely replaced the daguerreotype.”

  “I’ve never heard of an ambrotype.”

  “Most people haven’t. They were produced on glass instead of metal. They were easy to look at. You didn’t have to tilt the glass this way and that to see the image, the way you do with a dag. See?”

  She held out a daguerreotype to Dan on her palm. He had to tip her hand in various directions before light met the metal at an angle that revealed the image. Even then, it wasn’t easy to see.

  “It shifts,” he said.

  “From a negative to positive image,” she agreed. “That’s how you know it’s a daguerreotype instead of a tintype.” She put the image back in its place. “Ambrotypes were a lot easier to produce than dags. No long exposures with the sitter’s head held immobile in a contraption that must have come from the Spanish Inquisition. Dags were expensive. Ambrotypes were cheaper. Not cheap, mind you. No new technology ever is. Ambrotypes were really popular in the mid-1850s.”

  “Then someone developed a better technology?”

  “Better, cheaper, and a whole lot quicker. Tintypes.”

  Dan looked at the various images scattered across his house. So many ways to take pictures, so many things to mount the images on to preserve them. “So tintypes are photographs on tin?”

  “No. Iron. Originally they were called ferrotypes or melainotypes, a salute to the iron backing. Then they got the name tintypes because tin shears were used to cut up the photographic plate into halves, quarters, sixths, ninths, even as small as one-inch square. There wasn’t another really significant advance in photography after that until the 1880s, when flexible film and Kodak cameras made everyone his own historian.”

  “I’d swear some of those paper photographs are older than 1880,” Dan said, looking at the bed.

  She followed his glance. “Absolutely. The paper print process was developed at the same time as daguerreotypes. But paper didn’t become really popular until people figured out how to make multiple images. Prints. Then you had people making visiting cards and cabinet cards and stereographs. Unfortunately, everyone collected cards of the rich and famous and bought stereographs for the fun of it. Stuff you have in your family history box might have no more actual relationship to your family than I have to a postcard of Queen Elizabeth.”

  Dan started to ask another question.

  “But right now,” Carly said firmly, “I want to concentrate on describing Winifred’s dags for my file.”

  She opened her computer to the file that held photographic forms for the Castillo project. Then she hesitated and looked up at Dan before she handed over the computer.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said. “It’s really boring.”

  “Groundwork often is,” he said, taking the computer, “but without it you don’t have anything except hot air.”

  She let out a long breath. “Not many people understand that.”

  “See?” He settled cross-legged on the floor near her. “Just one more thing we have in common.”

  Carly looked at his innocent expression and crystal green eyes. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “No, at me. I’m going to spend the next few hours working my ass off with a pretty lady instead of being all smooth and seductive and getting her in bed.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  His smile was as real as it was slow. “No.”

  She felt like fanning herself but didn’t want to encourage him. He was way too sexy as it was. Why did my hormones decide to wake up now? Is it my biological clock running amok?

  She wanted to believe that. She really did.

  And she was afraid the truth was that Dan pushed her female buttons just by being alive. Handsome she could shrug off. Intelligent with a wicked sense of humor slid right past her defenses.

  I’m in trouble. Then she smiled. About time, too.

  “What?” he asked, seeing her smile.

  “Ready to type?”

  He started to pursue the source of that secret feminine smile, then decided against it. He didn’t want to crowd her.

  At least not too much.

  Yet.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Winifred Simmons y Castillo File. First image. Daguerreotype, half plate, frame is wood with embossed leather, hook-and-eye clasp, no photographer name or studio embossed on the velvet backing. Standing woman, dark hair, probably a riding hat. Costume simple, low waist, long, full skirt, slightly fuller sleeves on the forearms, large decorative buttons down the front, possibly a type of gathering or bustle behind, fabric is medium to dark with dark accents, backdrop is painted columns and drapery…”

  As Carly continued describing the contents of the photo, she took several views of it with her digital camera, which was connected by cable to the computer Dan was typing on.

  “Hey, you’re fast,” she s
aid, watching him.

  “Only for some things. For others, I’m slow and thorough.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, and told herself that she was imagining a double meaning. Then she saw the curving line of his mouth and knew that anything she was imagining, he was, too.

  And she couldn’t even call him on it without putting both feet in her mouth.

  “Right,” she muttered. “Date assigned to first image is tentatively mid-1840s, based on the case and the costume.”

  Dan started to ask a question, then didn’t. They would be up all night if he let his own curiosity off the leash. Even so, it was hard not to ask. Expertise of any kind fascinated him.

  And he could have sworn some of those images looked familiar. It couldn’t have been family photographs from his own past, because his mother didn’t have any that were older than her children.

  Carly downloaded the digital images of the daguerreotype into the appropriate part of the e-form Dan had just finished filling in. “Second image. Daguerreotype, half plate, wood case, embossed leather, rose motif. Standing woman, not the same person as in first image, appears old enough to be the mother of the first, same style of costume…”

  Dan called up another blank form, typed quickly, and thought about how different this was from his usual reports, which were a combination of political rumor and innuendo, facts and body counts, educated insights and outright hunches, players and police and the poor sons of bitches caught in between. Those were the people he felt sorry for, wanted to help, and all too often had been able to do little more than bury the dead and pray for the living.

  Maybe Carly had a point. If you investigated the past instead of the present, at least the blood was already dry.

  Together Dan and Carly quickly described and catalogued six daguerreotypes. When they came to the seventh, Dan felt like a hunter that had just spotted dinner.

  “I know that one,” he said, pointing to an image of a bride and groom. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Where?” Carly demanded. “Winifred ignored it when I asked questions.”

  “Newspaper archives. I can’t remember if it was a drawing or a photograph of the original daguerreotype. But that’s the first Andrew Jackson Quintrell and his bride, Isobel Quintrell y Castillo. Only after her marriage, she was careful to use an Anglicized version of her name—Isobel Castillo Quintrell. So the daguerreotype was taken in 1865, New Mexico Territory, the year of their marriage. Probably taken in Santa Fe, but I can’t be sure. The article might name the photographer, or daguerreotypist, or whatever they were called, and will certainly give a date for the marriage.”

  Carly grinned and planted a smacking kiss on Dan’s cheek. “Fantastic! Has anyone ever told you you’re a genius?”

  “Kiss me again and you can call me anything you want.”

  “Oh, the temptation.”

  “The kiss or the name-calling?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled her close with startling speed, kissed her lazily, thoroughly, and released her with a slow smile. “Let the name-calling begin.”

  Carly couldn’t catch her breath, much less use it to yell at the man who had just showed her that when it came to kissing, she had a few things left to learn. The thought was dizzying.

  “No comment?” he asked.

  “Does ‘Whew’ count?”

  His hand snaked around her nape. “Want to go for ‘Wow’?”

  Her body said yes.

  Her mind said not yet.

  Dan read her well. He released her with a slow caress along her jawline. “What comes after the daguerreotypes?”

  “The what?” Abruptly she looked away so that she wouldn’t get lost in the hothouse green of his eyes. “Ambrotypes.” She let out a long breath. “You’re a very disturbing man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Sure it was. When you’re concentrating, it would take dynamite to break through. Therefore, I’m dynamite.”

  She laughed almost helplessly. Then she just laughed. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed a man as much as Daniel Duran. In truth, it had been forever.

  “If I’m going to earn Winifred’s bonus for finishing early, I have to stay focused,” Carly said. The slow trailing of her fingertips down his stubble-rough cheek said focus wasn’t easy right now. “Help me out, okay?”

  He nodded, brushed a kiss over her fingertips, and turned back to the computer. “Ambrotypes.”

  She sighed. “Right. Ambrotypes.” Very gently she picked up the first one in her cotton-clad fingers. “Eighth image. Size, quarter plate. Case is probably mid-1850s. The collodion is very badly damaged and curling away from the glass in fragments. I doubt that restoration is possible. In any case, Winifred doesn’t want to pay for it. The best I can do is photograph the ruined image and play with it digitally.”

  Dan typed while Carly photographed and mourned the ambrotypes that hadn’t survived the passage of time. Sometimes cheaper and faster wasn’t good in the long run; daguerreotypes survived intact while ambrotypes were reduced to little more than black flakes and glass.

  “How long were ambrotypes popular?” he asked when she paused.

  “Less than a decade, thank God. Tintypes are a lot more durable.” She shook her head. “It’s almost not worth the hard drive space, but you never know. Some bright tech type might eventually figure out a way to resurrect the images.”

  When Carly reached for the first tintype, she glanced sideways at Dan. From the way he was acting, the kiss had never happened. Even as she told herself that she couldn’t complain, that he was doing exactly what she’d asked, she looked at his mouth. Soft and hungry over hers, hard to forget, impossible not to want again.

  “You’re distracting me,” Dan said without turning from the computer.

  “Work on your concentration.”

  He snickered.

  “Image twenty-one,” she said briskly. “Tintype, half plate, brown tint, very probably Isobel Quintrell or a close relative based on the line of the chin, the space between the eyes, and the cheekbones. This woman is in full mourning clothes holding what appears to be a stillborn baby wrapped in baptismal white.”

  Dan’s fingers paused over the computer keyboard. “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  He glanced up at her in disbelief.

  “It’s true,” Carly said. “Women often were photographed with their dead children and the image sent to distant family members as a kind of memorial for the dead child. With multiple camera lenses, multiple photos could be taken at the same time, so you could send out as many memorial photos as you had the money and patience for.”

  He raised his dark eyebrows. “A lot of cultures make offerings to the dead, but this is a new one to me.”

  “The nineteenth century had a much greater understanding of the inevitability of death and the importance of death rituals than we do in the twenty-first. They lived a lot closer to the bone then.”

  “So some of the men in those photos who look like death masks probably were?”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and began photographing the tintype, talking as she worked. “Mortuary photos or funerary photos or whatever you call them had quite a vogue. They were a way to unite families separated by miles that couldn’t be covered any faster than a horse could gallop or a ship could sail.”

  He glanced sideways at Carly. She was wearing jeans and one of his old sweatshirts, no makeup, barefoot, clean white cotton gloves on her hands, wielding a high-tech camera, and talking matter-of-factly about the great American taboo—death.

  “Not that they didn’t pretty up death,” she added. “The family corpses were washed and dressed in their finest for the photographers. The only time death was taken head-on was with posthumous photos of criminals. Then the bodies were just propped up so that the camera could record the bullet holes and the faces. Proof of death, as it were. Much easi
er than hauling a corpse all over the West to claim a Dead or Alive reward.” She put her fists into the small of her back and stretched. “Same for hangings. Photo cards of executed outlaws were real moneymakers for some photographers.”

  Subtly Dan shifted in his chair, easing his healing leg into a new position.

  Carly saw the motion. “Maybe we should take a break.”

  “I’ve got another two hours before I get restless.”

  “But your leg—”

  “Is fine.” He held his hands over the keyboard. “What’s the next image?”

  She swallowed her objections and picked up the next tintype, describing the presentation case, background, and other pertinent aids to dating. “Same woman, different mourning dress, different baptismal wrap for the child, who looks to be perhaps two months old. Dress is very flat down the front, cinched severely at the waist, and has a short train. Probably late 1870s.”

  Dan typed in the description of the mortuary image. The next three tintypes were the same—only the style of the mourning clothes and the age of the dead child changed.

  “Okay, that takes care of the deceased,” Carly muttered, taking a final photo. “On to the kids that made it.”

  “Six dead children, none of them old enough to crawl. It’s a wonder that she survived,” Dan said. “You’re sure they’re all the same woman?”

  “The black rosary dangling from her hands looks the same in each image. When I enhance it digitally, I’ll be certain.”

  The next three tintypes were of living children, two girls and a boy. Even as a baby, the stamp of the first Andrew Jackson Quintrell came down in the son’s pale, brilliant eyes. His mother was in the shape of his jaw and the tiny ears.

  “If you’re right and the woman is Isobel,” Dan said, “then the boy is A. J. Quintrell Junior. His sisters are…” He frowned and rummaged in his mind through old research, the kind that had made his mother so angry she didn’t speak to him for a week. “María and Elena, I think. Their birth would have been announced in the newspaper. Ditto for their death.”