St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

The door opened and then shut behind them, leaving them in the wind-haunted cold of night.
    Neither said anything.
    Both wondered what Winifred had been trying to tell them.

CASTILLO RIDGE
FRIDAY NIGHT
44
    THE NIGHTSCOPE MAKES IT EASY . GOOD THING . THE COLD IS TAKING THE FEELING out of my hands, and the wind…
    The wind was always a rifleman’s enemy.
    The sniper watched through the scope as Carly and Dan left the house. They got into his truck, but instead of heading toward the road leading back to Taos, the truck turned toward the outbuildings.
    Now what?
    The headlights would blow out the nightscope, so the sniper tracked them with binoculars. They drove past the barn and out the pasture road to the graveyard.
    Well, damn. I had my spot all picked out and they’re going in the other direction.
    Cold, stiff, cursing silently, the sniper watched the truck pull up to the Quintrell family graveyard. As soon as the lights went off, he switched back to watching his target through the nightscope mounted on his rifle barrel. It was more for practice than anything else. The graveyard was just under a mile from the main house, but that wasn’t the real problem.
    The eight-foot-tall wrought-iron fence made shooting really dicey.
    The angle wasn’t great enough for him to shoot over the fence unless the target stood tall and straight away from the fence instead of bent over grubbing around the gravestones on perimeter, right next to the fence. The gravestones themselves were another shooting hazard. Not to mention the trees that had been planted on or near some graves.
    The faint sound of voices lifted on the fitful wind. A flashlight turned on below.
    The sniper went back to night-vision binoculars.
    Finish whatever you came for, get on the road, and circle back around the other side of the ridge to get to the highway.
    He ached with cold. It was time to get it done and move on.
    Come on, come on, hurry up. Make it any harder on me and I’ll kill both of you.

QUINTRELL RANCH
FRIDAY NIGHT
45
    CARLY SMACKED HER HANDS TOGETHER . EVEN INSIDE LINED GLOVES , HER FINGERS were getting cold.
    “I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason for the placement of graves,” Dan said.
    “Usually, the closer to the founder’s grave, the higher the rank,” Carly said. “But Liza’s grave isn’t with her brother’s or her sister’s.”
    Dan dusted snow off the last headstone. “Nope. This one is a memorial stone to a Quintrell who died in the Civil War.”
    “Really?” Carly came over, took a digital photo, and shoved the camera back in her pocket. “Samuel Quintrell. Wonder if he was a brother or a father or an uncle or—”
    “Doesn’t matter,” Dan cut in. “Winifred only wants—”
    “Castillos,” Carly finished in disgust.
    “Let’s try the lower half of the graveyard.”
    Carly looked toward the section of the graveyard reserved for ranch workers. “Are you saying that some of the employees had higher ‘rank’ than the Senator’s daughter?”
    “If we’re talking about my grandmother, yes,” Dan said as he walked the length of the ghostly white fence. “I’m guessing that Liza was lucky to be buried here at all. Probably wouldn’t have been, but the Quintrells didn’t want to make any fuss that would attract more attention to Liza’s sorry life.”
    Carly moved the flashlight over the modest gravestones that paralleled the fence. “These are all Isobel’s cousins or retainers or whatever.”
    “Same difference. Back then, the whole family—distant cousins, in-laws of cousins, in-laws of in-laws—followed the money. Isobel had it and Andrew Quintrell made it grow. Once the Senator got into politics and increased his connection to the Sandovals through Sylvia, he kept the money growing.”
    “You’re so cynical.”
    “It’s my middle name.”
    “Really?” she asked.
    “It’s better than Warden.”
    “Warden?”
    “My middle name.”
    Bright as moonlight, Carly’s laughter floated up into the darkness until the wind caught it and swept it away.
    After poking around the fence, Dan knelt near it and rubbed wind-driven snow off a headstone. The grave that had been set apart from even the distant family who worked on the ranch.
    “Here we go.” His voice was matter-of-fact. He could have been talking about the weather. “Elizabeth Isobel Quintrell, 1936 to 1968.”
    “Thirty-two years old,” Carly said. “What a waste.”
    “She must have liked her life well enough.”
    “How