St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

no-good exfelon boyfriend were better suited to TV daytime drama than the Quintrell family history.
    The door leading into the entrance hall of the guest house from the courtyard didn’t respond to Carly’s key. She tried again, eyed the sagging doorframe, and gave the door a judicious thump just below the lock. The door opened obediently.
    Wonder if the same trick would work on the maids.
    Smiling slightly, Carly pulled the door shut behind herself, discovered that the lock was broken, not stubborn, and shrugged. The old house wasn’t exactly a magnet for visitors or thieves.
    The front gallery was well rubbed and clean beneath the dust, telling Carly that the neglect was relatively recent.
    “Wonder if the hired help used the Senator’s illness to slack off,” she said into the microphone. “I’m getting the feeling that Winifred doesn’t have much clout around here. That could be a problem. If the living aren’t willing to cooperate, I’ll be stuck with photos and newspaper files and such. Oh well. Won’t be the first time.”
    Unlike the other doors in the house, the openings leading into the outer world made a grand statement—huge double doors with a beautiful handmade wrought-iron bar thrown across the eight-foot width to secure the opening. The bar’s grip was worn smooth by the countless times someone had grabbed it and moved it aside. The lock on the front doors was ancient and worked better than any modern lock in the house. The big skeleton key she’d been given turned easily and smoothly in the lock.
    Carly hesitated, then shrugged and locked the door again behind her. Wind swept down from the cloud-shrouded peaks. She pulled her wool jacket more closely around her. The weaving was from the town of Chimayo, a place renowned for the quality of its wool garments. Bright, distinctive Southwest designs covered the jacket. The wool was thick and heavy, but no longer stiff. She’d worn the jacket for years and would wear it for years more. Chimayo weavings were made for the long run by people who understood the climate of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
    The new house was a few hundred feet away. If dead or dormant plants were any indication, the pathway between the houses wound through a kitchen garden, a rose garden, and a family orchard. At the moment, everything that wasn’t white with snow was brown and ragged.
    “Note: Ask Winifred for photos and/or memories of the garden in spring and summer and fall. In the right seasons, it must have been a favorite place for parties and quiet breakfasts.”
    Carly ducked her head against the wind and moved as quickly as she dared with ice hiding under some patches of snow. Her shoes were sleek and leather and totally wrong for the outdoors at seven thousand feet in the winter. When she was more familiar with the intimidating Miss— not Ms. —Winifred, Carly would wear more casual shoes. Until then, it was leather shoes and wool slacks and cashmere turtlenecks under one of the three jackets she’d brought.
    The new house had a sweeping modern design with a wall of triple-paned glass facing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which rose almost seven thousand feet above the Taos Valley floor. The layout of the house suggested a boomerang with the outer edge made of glass and the inner edge enclosing two sides of the patio with its zero-edge pool shimmering with concealed lights. Off to one side, connected by a glassed-in walkway, was an apartment once used by visiting dignitaries and now home to Pete and Melissa Moore.
    “Interesting,” Carly murmured into the microphone. “Most people cover their pools in winter. Wonder if there’s a story behind that, or if it’s just an oversight because of the Senator’s long decline.”
    The shorter side of the boomerang enclosed Miss Winifred’s suite and the specialized accommodations for her sister, Sylvia Quintrell, the Senator’s widow. Not that Sylvia knew she was a widow. She hadn’t spoken to anyone or otherwise acknowledged her surroundings since the 1960s.
    “Note: See if there are any movies or videos of Mrs. Quintrell before her illness.”
    Carly crossed the patio, skirted the pool, and arrived at Winifred’s door on a blast of wind that rocked her. She lifted the antique knocker—an upside-down horseshoe, to hold all the luck inside—and rapped three times.
    No sound came from inside the house.
    She waited, shivering in the wind. She’d decided to knock again, harder, when the