Always Time To Die sk-1

by Elizabeth Lowell

Dan's tone made Diana flinch. She looked automatically toward the back door, where John would come in as soon as he got back from buying a part for the old tractor.

  "He isn't here," Dan said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. "Even if he was, I'd keep on asking. If anything more happens to Carly, it will be over my dead body."

  Dan handed his mother another tissue and took the soiled one.

  There was silence for a long time. Then Diana sighed and stuffed the second tissue in her pocket. For now, the nosebleed was gone.

  "I wouldn't ask you if I had any other choice," Dan said, shoving the first tissue into his jeans pocket. "I'm not a teenager anymore, curious about my grandparents and my mother's childhood. I'm a man who has been trained to evaluate threats and remove them when necessary.

  Please don't get in my way. I don't want to hurt you." His mouth settled into a grim line. "Carly is innocent of whatever happened in the past. It's the innocent who must be protected first. You taught me that, Mom."

  Diana bowed her head. What Dan was saying was true. But there was another truth, and its ugliness made her stomach clench and cold sweat slick her body.

  "Take her away from here," Diana said in a hoarse voice. "Far away. Don't come back until the last of the devil's spawn is dead."

  "I won't go," Carly said gently. "I made a promise to Winifred. I keep my word. Do you know anything that would help me do my job?"

  "I know evil exists."

  Carly had no idea how to respond to that.

  Diana looked at Carly, saw she didn't understand, and said to her, "You don't believe in evil, just in good. Evil knows its enemy. Good knows only itself. That is why the good die young." She looked at Dan again. "Take her away from here."

  "Kidnapping is against the law." Dan pinned his mother with a bleak glance. "Do you know anything that could help us find out who's behind all this?"

  "I haven't heard anything."

  "Have you tried?" he asked.

  She hesitated. "No."

  "Try," he said. "Please. If we know which part of the Quintrell history is causing the problem, we'll have a handle on who as well. Your past can't be remade, but Carly's future can."

  Diana closed her eyes and fought against the nausea turning in her throat, the memories of drunken men and a mother who never heard her own child's screams, a father who was more than that, hideously more.

  "It's happening again," she whispered.

  "What is?" Dan asked, his voice gentle. She looked so pale, so worn, her eyelids closed, quivering.

  "Evil. Death that shouldn't have been. My mother, screaming and laughing, then just screaming."

  Dan's breath caught. It was the first time he'd ever heard his mother mention her childhood. "Why was she screaming?" he asked softly.

  "Because the dead walk among the living. I know this for truth. My mother's friend saw it. Susan. She told my mother and my mother told me."

  Dan bit back a curse. His grandmother, the liar and addict, lost in her own twisted mind.

  "My mother saw the ghost of another man," Diana said, opening her eyes. They were wide, staring, fixed on nothing. "A dead man walking, using the name of life."

  The darkness in his mother's eyes made Dan want to hit something. He hated doing this to her.

  "Two days later she was dead," Diana said in a raw voice.

  "What other man did she see?" Carly asked gently.

  "Cain."

  Carly looked at Dan, who was watching his mother with sadness and pity combined.

  "Is that what your mother said?" he asked.

  "I remember. I remember the exact words. They live in my dreams. Nightmares." Diana spoke quickly now, the past a river whose dam was crumbling, a torrent seeking release. "She said, 'The dead walk and eat at my father's ranch. Cain lives and Abel is dead.' Then she started screaming and laughing and smashing everything she could reach, cutting herself on the glass, throwing knives and dishes and splashing blood everywhere, shrieking about a prodigal daughter finally getting even with God, and then she came at me with a knife and her hands were bloody and her eyes… her eyes…"

  Diana's throat closed as she stared through the present into a past no child should ever have seen.

  Dan caught his mother in a hug, trying to comfort her, hating himself and whatever had happened in his mother's past.

  "I ran," Diana said starkly, tears spilling down her cheeks. "I knew she needed help but I didn't get help for her. I hated her and I hated the evil she sold me to, so I hid in the church and told no one." A shudder racked her body. "The next thing I remember, she was dead. I could have helped her but I hated her too much. I wanted her dead. She was evil and the evil came down to me. No matter how much good I do, I

  am as evil as my mother and her brother were, and my grandfather who addicted her and turned her into a whore who sold her own child."

  Dan bent until his cheek was on his mother's hair. He held her, simply held her, hating the questions that had brought such pain.

  And that was all they'd brought. Nothing in Diana's and his grandmother's half-crazed memories of the past could help the present.

  "I've seen evil," Dan said, tipping up his mother's chin, kissing her cheek. "You aren't it. You're simply human. You were an abused, terrified child who grew up into a woman children run laughing to meet, knowing that they're safe with you. You're not evil at all. I love you and I'm very proud of you."

  Diana's sad, bitter smile made tears burn in Carly's eyes.

  "I have only one more thing to say, then we will never speak of this again," Diana said. "Ever."

  Slowly Dan released Diana and looked down into the eyes of a woman who was both his mother and a woman he'd never known. "I can't promise that, because I'm certain you haven't told me all you could. Why?"

  "The words would choke me," Diana said in a raw voice, "and they would destroy you. Take your woman away from here. Evil wants her, and evil always wins."

  Chapter 58

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  MELISSA WAS PACKING AN OVERNIGHT CASE WHEN PETE CALLED HER.

  "The governor's here," Pete said. He stood in the doorway to their apartment in the big house.

  "What are you talking about? No helicopter would fly in this weather."

  "He drove. I'll bet he has our pink slips."

  Melissa's full mouth turned down. "We knew that was coming when we were told to pack up the house."

  "How soon can we get our stuff out of here and head for the land of perpetual sun?" Pete asked. "I'm sick of this place."

  "The furniture we own isn't worth moving," she said. "Same for dishes and stuff. It'd be easier to walk away and replace what we need at the other end than fuss with an international move."

  "A few days? More?" Pete pressed.

  "What's the rush?"

  "The governor isn't the Senator. I'm having a hard time keeping my temper with him. It's time to move on, begin the rest of our life."

  Melissa's dark eyes searched her husband's face and found only impatience.

  "A week," she said. "We need at least that much lead time or the plane tickets will cost a fortune."

  Pete nodded. "Okay. A week. Then we're gone. And if the books are a mess, the governor can just cope. I'm sick of this job and the ranch. Too many people dying."

  "They were all as old as dirt." She shrugged. "What do you expect?"

  The doorbell chimed.

  "I'll get it," Pete said. "You finish packing for our time off in town. It's snowing pretty good. If we don't get out in the next hour, we might not get out at all."

  Melissa hesitated, then followed Pete down the hall instead of staying and packing. She listened while the men exchanged meaningless words about the weather and how sad Winifred was dead yada yada yada.

  The governor must have been as impatient as Pete. It didn't take but a few minutes to get to the bottom line: as of midnight, everyone at the ranch was terminated. As soon as they vacated the ran
ch, they'd receive three months' pay to ease the transition.

  "I'm sorry," the governor said. "I know you've given long and faithful work to the Quintrell family. There will be an extra six months' pay for you and Melissa. And of course I'll be happy to provide any references you need."

  "I appreciate that," Pete said, managing a smile. "I'll tell the rest of the staff as they show up Monday, unless you'd rather do it?"

  Josh closed his eyes briefly. "I should, but I don't have the time. I didn't have the time to come up here, but I just couldn't do this over the phone. Not with you two." He looked up, saw Melissa, and walked swiftly to her. "I'm very sorry, Melissa. I wish there was another way."

  "It's all right," she said, her smile almost real. "There have been so many changes lately, this isn't exactly unexpected."

  A few minutes later, Pete and Melissa watched the governor drive away. His generic white rental disappeared into the snow.

  "He can't fire us, we quit," Melissa said, laughing without humor. "He just didn't know it."

  "Good thing, too. You don't get severance pay when you quit." Pete smiled rather fiercely. " Rio de Janeiro, here we come."

  Chapter 59

  TAOS

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  THE PACKAGE FROM THE LAB WAS WAITING BY DAN'S FRONT DOOR. CARLY PICKED IT up and held it while Dan unlocked the door, locked it again behind them, and reset the alarm system.

  "Okay," she said. "Spit it out."

  "What?"

  "Whatever it is that's making you look like you want to hit something."

  "I'm just kicking myself for being an idiot."

  "Anything in particular?" she asked.

  "Yeah. No matter how many times my nose was rubbed in it, I still acted like I was on vacation."

  "You've been shot, had a brick heaved through your living room window, suffered a sneering sheriff, been drugged until you yakked up your toenails, and twice drew a gun with every intention of shooting someone. Which part of that qualifies as a vacation?"

  Dan would have smiled if he hadn't been so disgusted with himself. "My job is to gather and analyze information and draw pretty damned accurate conclusions, but so far I haven't been real effective. Comes from being too close to the problem."

  "I'm not sure I like being called a problem."

  "Not just you, honey. The Quintrell mess. Mom knows a lot more than she's telling me."

  "Do you think your father knows, too?"

  Carly set her package down long enough to shake the snow off her coat and hang it by the front door. She toed off her snow boots and walked across the floor in thick wool socks. Dan did the same.

  "If Dad does, he's never admitted it. But, no, I don't think he knows," Dan said. "He'd never have pushed Mom hard enough to make her talk."

  "Who, besides your mother, might know?" Carly asked.

  "That's just it. Her mother is dead. I don't know who Mom's father is and she says she doesn't know either." Dan shrugged. "The Senator might have known, but that's no help now."

  "Ditto for Sylvia and Winifred."

  "Jim Snead," Dan said.

  "Who?"

  "The wolfer. His family has been around the Quintrell ranch forever."

  "So has Melissa's," Carly said. "But she won't talk about it. What about the Sandovals?"

  "They'll talk only if the pertinent statutes have run out," Dan said. "Jim is probably our best bet."

  "Doesn't he have a brother?"

  "Blaine. If he's not too drunk or whacked out on something, he might talk to me. Or he might have the same problem with statutes that the Sandovals do. For sure he's on parole."

  "Lovely."

  Dan shrugged and started stacking kindling and pinon chunks in the little adobe hearth. "Welcome to rural America. Folks who think crime only happens in the cities have never lived anywhere else. People are people no matter where they call home."

  Carly watched Dan strike a match. Smoke curled up, then tiny flames bit into fragrant wood. Soon light danced and glowed in the small hearth.

  "I wish," she said, "that Winifred was alive and could give us permission to take a tissue sample from the Senator. And your grandmother."

  "Why?"

  "I've been thinking about Sylvia, about her going ballistic and at-tacking the Senator. Why would she suddenly just lose it? She already knew he had the fastest zipper in the West. Was there any scandal, local or otherwise, that hit about then?"

  "That was '67, right?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  Mentally Dan flipped through the history he'd once drawn of the Quintrells. "All that was going on was the hippie invasion in Taos, the Vietnam War, that sort of thing. No big divorces. No wife-swapping or getting caught with the gardener doing the nasty. No election or money-laundering scandals."

  "That's not much help. I'm trying to put myself in Sylvia's shoes, how I'd feel if I was married to the biggest womanizer this side of Don Juan. What would it take to make me go crazy?"

  Dan laughed softly.

  "What?" she asked.

  "If you'd been married to the Senator, the first time you found out about his women, he'd have awakened two balls shy of a reproductive package."

  Carly looked surprised. "What makes you say that?"

  "Anybody as passionate as you are in bed has a temper." He stood up and walked toward her. "I like that, Carolina May. Women with the personality of elevator music make me run for the nearest exit."

  "You're not worried about your, um, package?"

  "Honey, you can play with my package anytime you want."

  "I walked right into that one," she said, laughing. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, lingered, and made herself step back. "You're distracting me again."

  He wanted to keep right on distracting her, but put his hands in his pockets instead. It was time-past time-for him to stop being on vacation and start using his brain. Standing close enough to breathe in Carly's warmth didn't quicken his thought processes one bit.

  But it sure picked up his pulse.

  "Okay," he said. "Sylvia was used to infidelity. Where does that leave us?"

  Carly had a few thoughts on that subject. Several of them made her stomach clench. "Did she have a best friend? Someone she trusted who betrayed her with the Senator?"

  "That's kind of a reach. Sylvia would have been just as likely to jump the friend as the Senator. It goes about fifty-fifty when you walk in and find them in bed."

  "Fifty-fifty?"

  "Yeah. Do you jump the spouse or the lover?"

  Carly hesitated for a moment, then went on to the next possibility. "Okay. What about rape? If I found out my husband raped a woman, I don't know what I'd do. Taking a swing at him with a cast-iron frying pan would be a definite possibility."

  Dan weighed the idea and nodded. "Good idea. Melissa might know. She's the one who brushed off Winifred's talk of rape."

  "If Melissa knew, she wasn't eager to talk about it before."

  "We didn't lean very hard before," he said.

  "What do we have to lean with now?"

  "Melissa can take her choice-talk to us and we won't talk to the governor, or don't talk to us and we'll talk to the governor and say she did."

  Carly raised her eyebrows. "Remind me never to get between you and something you want." She took a deep breath. "Winifred said Sylvia tried to kill the Senator, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay." Carly took another breath. "The only thing I can think of that would make me want to actually kill my husband would be discovering that he'd had sex with our daughter."

  Dan whistled tunelessly. "That would put me over the top," he agreed.

  "It would also explain why your mother hates the Senator so much. She could be the child of incest."

  Dan didn't like it. He certainly didn't want to believe it. But it explained so much. "My grandmother wasn't a saint, but why would she tell her daughter something like that, especially if it was true?"

  "Why wouldn't she? She was a buzzed-up,
drugged-out woman who hated life and the world because her father was a man with the sex drive of a goat and the morals of a maggot."

  Dan stared into the fire, arranging and rearranging possibilities in light of what Carly had said. He didn't like the pattern that emerged but he was too smart to ignore it.

  Carly went to her computer, booted it up, and searched for references to Elizabeth, known as Liza, Quintrell. The photos came first. A young Liza on the Senator's knee. Liza being put up on a pony. Liza with a barrel racing ribbon from the local rodeo and a proud father standing by her stirrup.

  "With his hand on her calf and lust in his eyes," Dan said from behind Carly.

  "She can't be much older than thirteen."

  "If gossip is correct, that's about the time she started going wild. Drugs, booze."

  "That's also the last time the Senator and his daughter got together for a picture," Carly said. "Other people, other family, but not her."

  "If what you think is true, Liza wouldn't want to be within a country mile of her father."

  Carly divided the screen and called up the Senator's wedding. "I keep remembering one photo where he had his arm around his bride and-here it is. The look he's giving that other woman." She zoomed in on part of the photo, excerpted it, put it next to the photo of Liza and the Senator, and felt her stomach clench again. "I wish Sylvia had killed him."

  Dan studied the two photos. Nothing had changed about the Senator's predatory look except the female it was directed at.

  "When I think of how much my mother and grandmother endured because of him," Dan said finally, "I could kill him myself. There's only one problem."

  "He's already dead?"

  Despite the grim brackets around Dan's mouth, he smiled and tugged at the coil of hair Carly was winding around her finger. "That, too. But we're assuming that the secret-whatever it is-the one the governor is so worried about coming out, outlasted the Senator's death."

  "Is there a statute on incestuous rape?" Carly asked bitterly.

  "Sure. We have laws about when and where you can spit." Dan shrugged. "Even if we prove that the Senator had a child with his own daughter, I can't see it doing anything but getting a sympathy vote for Josh Quintrell. I doubt if the governor would get his dick in a twist over a fifty-year-old secret coming out. He would be publicly repelled, fund a committee to study and prevent the origins of incest and help the victims, and go to church to pray for the Senator's soul and that of his poor sister. None of the above would hurt him in the polls."