Always Time To Die sk-1

by Elizabeth Lowell

"Who is it?"

  "The curandera's son."

  The door opened slowly. Winifred's black eyes looked Dan over. "Heard you were back. And busted up."

  "A little accident, that's all."

  She made a sound that said she didn't believe him, but she stepped aside. "Well, come on in."

  The heat of the room brought sweat out across Dan's back. His glance went around the room, missing nothing, including a surprised Carly sitting on the floor surrounded by photos of all ages and sizes. He nodded coolly to her.

  He didn't like discovering that he'd driven forty minutes over frozen ruts because he hoped to catch a glimpse of a busybody's smoke-and-gold eyes.

  "You're looking well, Miss Winifred," Dan said. It was a lie; she looked tired, pale, and unusually gaunt.

  "Wish I could say the same about you." Despite her curtness, Winifred smiled. "I was hoping you'd come around to see an old lady. About time you remembered your manners."

  He shook his head. "You haven't changed a bit."

  She gave a bark of laughter. "What did you expect, a miracle? God has better things to do than transform me. Give me a hug and I'll forgive you for waiting so long to see me."

  Carefully Dan hugged the woman who was old enough to be his grandmother and tough enough to be Satan's sister. Winifred was all sinew and bones and attitude. The realization that he'd missed her amazed him. Like the Snead brothers and the warmth of his parents' kitchen, Winifred was part of a childhood that he only now was coming to value instead of simply accepting as a given.

  "How is Mrs. Quintrell?" Dan asked.

  "Winters are hard on her," Winifred said, looking toward the bed.

  Dan nodded as if he thought Sylvia noticed the difference in the view out her windows from spring to summer, fall to winter. But the changing seasons mattered to Winifred, so they had to matter to Sylvia.

  Sometimes he wasn't sure what Winifred believed in the silence of her own mind, but he knew that those beliefs made it possible for the old woman to face another day of caring for a sister who would never care about anything in this life.

  "Well, what did your mother send me?"

  "I'm an errand boy, not an herbalist," Dan said. "All I know is the package with the red tape is for fever and cough. Mom said you'd probably be needing that if you have the flu that's been working its way through the valley."

  "Let's see what you have," Winifred said, stifling a cough. "I can't afford to be sick. Sylvia needs me. Without me, she'd die."

  Dan believed it. Certainly nothing else was keeping Sylvia alive.

  He began pulling paper packets from his jacket pockets. Next came small baked-clay containers, plus one larger one, until finally his pockets were empty. He peeled off his jacket and hung it over his arm. The room was way too hot for anyone healthy.

  Which explained why Carly was wearing a loose T-shirt and jeans, bare feet, and a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Her feet were narrow and high-arched. Bright purple toenails struck a note of rebellion.

  Something Celtic had been tattooed on the inside of her right ankle. He wondered what the design was, and if it would feel or taste different from the rest of her skin.

  Deliberately he ignored that line of thought and looked back at Winifred. She picked up each package and container in turn, sniffed, and nodded approvingly.

  "No one equals your mother," Winifred said, "except maybe my mother's grandmother, and there were whispers about the unfortunate state of her soul."

  Dan saw that Carly had quietly come to her feet and was standing nearby, close enough to catch what he and Winifred said.

  Recording every word, I'll bet.

  He tried to be irritated, but whatever scent Carly was wearing smelled better than everything else in the room.

  Innocence and spice. Hell of a combination.

  "Don't let me interrupt," Dan said. "Like I said, I'm only a delivery boy."

  Winifred laughed huskily. "You stay put and let me see you. Thought we'd lost you this time for sure."

  "Just a climbing accident," he said. "Those volcanoes are tricky."

  She snorted and gave him a look that told him she knew what had really happened. Somehow, someway, she knew.

  It has to be the Sandoval family, Dan decided. Smugglers' grapevine. Drug runners' grapevine. Curanderos' grapevine.

  Shit. I'd really hoped it wasn't the Sandovals.

  And he'd known it was.

  That was why he was on "vacation" leave in northern New Mexico, where Sandoval men had been devils and their women had been patient saints for three hundred years.

  Winifred nodded once, abruptly, and turned back to Carly.

  Message delivered, Dan thought. Too bad I'm not sure which side of the law Winifred lives on.

  "We were talking about my childhood memories," Winifred said to Carly.

  "Yes," Carly said eagerly.

  "My grandfather and grandmother were both Castillos." As Winifred spoke, she sorted through the herbs and potions and salves Dan had brought. "They weren't close enough in blood to bother the church, and not distant enough to divide up the Onate grant even more. My grandmother died giving birth to her first child, my mother Maria. Maria was fourteen when she married the son of a blue-eyed Anglo bandit. Not that we thought of our father that way, a bandit. Hale Simmons came from a long line of men who'd lost one war after another, either the Civil War or older wars in Scotland. Those men didn't have much use for governments and laws that took what a man earned."

  Dan's mouth took on a sardonic curve. Nothing much had changed. Nothing ever would. The law benefited those in power. Lawlessness benefited those without power. The good and the law-abiding got ground up between law and outlaw. People who tried to change that woke up with bullets in their body.

  If they woke up at all.

  "The Castillos didn't obey any laws they didn't have to. That was the way of New Mexico, where no government really got a grip on the rural people," Winifred said. "Everyone thinks it's different now. It isn't." She handed an envelope to Carly. "You asked for pictures of Sylvia. Here are some school photos, wedding photos, birthday and Christmas, that sort of thing. The last photos, the ones of me in the garden, were from 1964. I came back in to the ranch for good the following year, when Sylvia had her stroke. The Senator was going to put her in an institution, but I told him to forget it. He needed the Sandoval vote to get elected again, and I'd see that he lost it unless Sylvia stayed at the ranch."

  Dan was glad that he'd learned to have a poker face at an early age. He'd always wondered why the Senator hadn't walked away from his hopelessly ill wife. Now he knew.

  And now he wondered how deep Winifred's ties to the Sandovals really were.

  "Could you have done that?" Carly asked.

  "Yes." Winifred looked straight at Dan. "Castillos and Sandovals have intermarried for three hundred years. Two of my father's sisters married into the Sandoval family. One Sandoval in Mexico. Another in Colombia. They had no use for Yankee laws. Their sons and daughters and grandchildren feel the same. They remember a time when poppy and peyote, morning glory and cocoa leaf were legal, the medicines of the curanderos. They remember when they walked tall and Anglos were carpetbaggers."

  "That was a long time ago," Dan said quietly.

  "Not to those who lost. To them, it's new and bitter. It always will be until the wrongs of the past are righted."

  "That will never happen," Dan said. "The remembered wrongs will always be bigger than anything the present can offer as payment."

  "I don't believe that." Winifred's voice was thin, harsh.

  Carly looked between the two of them, surprised by the undercurrents. She'd never been in a family where history ran so close and hard beneath the surface of today. It was exciting and… unsettling. She felt like she was walking through a minefield of past emotions that might explode at any instant.

  Winifred let out a long breath and wiped her forehead on the back of her arm. Silver gleamed from the thick cuff bracelet sh
e wore. She looked at the herbs spread across the coffee table and felt much older than her years. She felt ancient.

  He's wrong.

  I will have my vengeance.

  Winifred picked up the small clay pot that was surrounded by herbs and went to Sylvia's bedside.

  Silence grew until Carly was sure everyone could hear her breathe. She cleared her throat and tried to find a neutral topic. Her glance fell on the packages of herbs.

  "Is that what your mother was growing in her greenhouse?" Carly asked Dan. "Herbs and such?"

  "Herbs, pepper and tomato seedlings, garlic and onion starts, even some rare kinds of beans," he said. And some other things best left unmentioned. "At seven thousand feet, the growing season is short. Mom gives her garden a head start."

  Carly opened her mouth to ask another question.

  "Do you need anything else?" Dan asked Winifred quickly. "Mom will be happy to send whatever you want."

  "All I need is luck and time." Then, to Carly, "Spit it out, girl. I don't have all night."

  "I just wondered who taught Mrs. Duran about herbs and potions."

  "I did, but she has her great-great-grandmother's uncanny way with plants."

  "Is Mrs. Duran related to you?" Carly asked, startled. "She wasn't on the list of relatives you gave me."

  "If your family has been here for more than three generations, everyone's related, one way or another," Dan said before Winifred could. "Like any other old village, you have all kinds and degrees of cousins under every bush."

  Winifred's mouth thinned. "You wouldn't believe how close to the bone some of the old families bred."

  Carly's eyes gleamed gold. "I'd love to do a DNA study of-"

  "What's that?" Winifred cut in.

  "You remember the Dillons of Phoenix? You mentioned them when you first called me."

  Winifred nodded. "I heard about them on Behind the Scenes. When I called you and you sent me the article on the Dillons, I ordered your family history of them, and hired you on the spot. There was something about DNA in the article, and how it helped them to connect up parts of their family they didn't know about."

  "Right," Carly said eagerly. "They were looking for a lost great-grandfather, so they traced the Y-DNA, which is passed down through the male germ cell. Turns out that they were related to Thomas Jefferson through-"

  "I should have figured the test would only be for men," Winifred cut in. "I'm interested in my family's women. Men get more than their share of everything just by being men."

  "That's true," Dan said quickly, trying to cut Carly off.

  It didn't work.

  "If you're more concerned with female relatives," Carly said over his words, "you work with mtDNA, which comes down only from the female germ cell. Mothers pass it to daughters, who pass it to their own daughters, and so on. If a woman doesn't have any daughters, her mtDNA line dies out."

  Don't take the bait, Winifred, Dan urged silently. More people are hurt by having too much knowledge than by having too little.

  "Wait." Winifred frowned and tried to concentrate. The small fever she was running didn't help. "Are you telling me that you can know who is or isn't related to a woman by using special DNA tests? Does it work for men, too?"

  "Yes."

  "How?" Winifred asked, intrigued despite herself.

  "The male's germ cell can't carry his mtDNA to the female germ cell, so the only way you get mtDNA-man or woman-is from the maternal line."

  "Is the test expensive or painful?" Winifred asked.

  "No pain at all," Carly reassured her. "There are several labs around the country that specialize in just such tests. It's not cheap, but if genetic certainty is important to you, then it's worth the cost."

  For a moment, more than fever brightened Winifred's dark eyes. "What do you need for the test?"

  "Almost anything will do. A swab from the inside of your cheek, a few drops of blood, the root of a hair. If you like, I'll order the test packet."

  "Do that. Order a bunch."

  "A bunch? Four? Six? More?"

  "Ten. Ten should do it. Get them here quick. I'll pay for it."

  Ten? Carly thought. Is she going to test everyone in the household? But all she said was, "They'll be here by Wednesday."

  "Send them in my name."

  "Of course."

  Winifred nodded curtly and turned her attention to the herbs Dan had brought. "Thank your mother for me."

  "I will. She asked after Lucia's two youngest kids. They missed her weekend reading classes."

  "Alma was complaining that Lucia didn't come in to work today. Bet the kids are sick." Winifred sighed. "I'll check on them first thing in the morning."

  "I'll do it on my way home," Dan said. "You shouldn't be out in the wind until you're better."

  Winifred looked like she was going to object, but didn't. "I don't like leaving Sylvia alone. I have a feeling…" Her voice died. She rubbed her gnarled hands together. "Saw a raven flying alone over the cemetery. Not a good sign." She glanced at Carly. "Go with Dan to the Sandovals. The men haven't been worth a damn, but the women have lived in the valley since the Rebellion. Maybe they'll be able to answer some of your local history questions."

  "They might not want company right now," Dan said quickly.

  "Why?"

  "Armando just got busted for cockfighting."

  Winifred said something in the old Spanish that Carly had been struggling with in the archives. Then Winifred sighed and went to a cupboard across the room. She opened a drawer and came back to Dan with some limp bills in her hands.

  "Put this where Lucia will find it," Winifred said. "Those no-good brothers of hers never leave any cash in the house."

  Chapter 13

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  MONDAY NIGHT

  THE KITCHEN DOOR SHUT BEHIND CARLY, LEAVING HER LITERALLY OUT IN THE COLD.

  She shivered and clutched her computer closer as the night air bit through her thin clothes. Stars glittered thickly overhead.

  "Is Lucia a Sandoval by birth or marriage?" Carly asked.

  "Both. Third cousins, I think." He saw another shiver take Carly. Now that the storm had passed, it was much colder. "This is stupid," he said. "You don't have to come along with me. Winifred won't know. She just wanted a way to get rid of you without admitting how worn out she is."

  "And you'll take any excuse handy to do the same," Carly said. "You lose. I'm coming. A family that's been living side by side with the Quintrells and Castillos for the last few hundred years, and marrying back and forth, is just what I need. Despite Winifred's bias, men and their personal histories are necessary to a family narration."

  "Don't tell her that."

  "Do I look stupid?" Then Carly thought of her wild curls and bare feet shoved into tennis shoes while she froze solid in the icy wind. "Never mind. I'm not. Besides, every time I bring up the necessity of men, she changes the subject."

  Her teeth chattered.

  "You wore sensible clothes to the funeral," Dan said impatient "Where are they?"

  "In my room, and how do you know what I wore to the funeral?"

  "Are you staying in the old house?"

  "Y-yes."

  He took her arm in a grip that was more impatient than polite. "Hurry up. You're freezing."

  She didn't argue or try to pull away. The difference between the hothouse temperature of Sylvia's room and the frigid night was making Carly light-headed.

  When they came to the big double doors of the old house, she took out the skeleton key. Her hand was shaking so much that Dan grabbed the key, stuck it in, and said, "It's unlocked."

  "I locked it."

  He didn't argue. He just shoved the key back into her hand, opened the door, and pushed her through to warmth. Without pausing he closed the door and automatically gave it just enough push so that the ancient lock mechanism settled into place.

  "Do you live here?" Carly asked.

  "No."

  "Then how did you know t
he door is sticky?"

  "Lucky guess."

  Carly didn't believe it and was certain he wasn't going to talk about it. "You know," she said reasonably, "the more you don't answer questions, the more curious I get."

  "The more questions I answer, the more you ask." He started down the hall toward the big guest room.

  "Wrong way," she said. "I'm across the courtyard to the right."

  His left eyebrow shot up. He wondered who had assigned Carly to what had once been the lowest housemaid's quarters.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Nothing." Dan realized that his breath was visible even in the entry hall. It was warmer than the outside, but hardly comfortable. "Somebody forgot to turn up the heat."

  "Doesn't matter to me." Carly pulled a key out of her back pocket and unlocked the door leading to the courtyard. "My room never was modernized."

  "Meaning?"

  "No connection to central heating. I use the corner fireplace to warm up." She turned the handle and leaned in. The door didn't open.

  "Why did you lock it?" Dan asked.

  "I didn't. I unlocked it." She frowned and turned the key the opposite way. The door opened. "At least I thought I did."

  Dan looked at the deserted courtyard. Several sets of tracks crisscrossed the snow. Fresh tracks. He stopped being irritated at himself for being attracted to Carly and started thinking. Fast.

  "Did you come back here after it stopped snowing?" he asked.

  "If I had, I'd be wearing my coat. I just sprinted over there in light clothes so I wouldn't suffocate once I got there. It was snowing then, and about twenty degrees warmer. Why?"

  Training that Dan had tried to leave behind clicked into focus. Adrenaline hummed, tuning his body for fight or flight. "Did someone come to clean your room while you were with Winifred?"

  "I doubt it. Once I pried clean sheets and towels out of Alma, she vanished."

  "You expecting company? A boyfriend?"

  Carly put her hands on her hips. "You're real good at questions yourself."

  "Be good at answers," he said, focusing on her.

  The bleak intensity of his eyes chilled her as much as the night. "I'm not expecting company of any kind or maid service or Santa and his hustling elves. Does that cover it?"