St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

Quintrell history—”
    “I don’t give a tinker’s damn about Quintrell history,” Winifred cut in. “It’s Sylvia’s and my history I want preserved. We go back a lot farther than the Quintrells. I traced us back all the way to Ferdinand the Great.”
    “Fascinating,” Carly said, trying not to sigh. Most connections to distant, famous ancestors were wishful thinking. Modern descendants weren’t happy to hear that their illustrious family tree existed only in some dead grandparent’s mind. “Do you have documentation?”
    “My mother got it from her mother, who got it from her father’s sister, who was told by her mother.”
    “I see. Anecdotal evidence is always a lively part of any family history,” Carly said carefully. “Physical evidence, such as land grants, marriage and birth registers, military records, church—”
    “I have them, too,” Winifred interrupted curtly. The hand wearing the turquoise ring waved in the direction of a huge antique desk. “All the way back to the seventeenth century.”
    Wonderful, Carly thought with no enthusiasm at all. That leaves a gap of six hundred years before we get to the eleventh century and Ferdinand the Great.
    Carly typed quickly on her laptop computer. “I’m eager to go through those papers, but I’m unclear as to what you want me to do. How far back in time do you want my narrative of your ancestors’ lives to go?”
    Something unpleasant flared in Winifred’s black eyes. It was in her voice, too, rough and nearly savage.
    Computer keys clicked softly as Carly’s flying fingers took note of the dark emotion.
    “The original land grant was given to the husband of Ignacia Isabel María Velásquez y Oñate before the Reconquista,” Winifred said.
    Carly flipped through her memory of early Spanish history in the area that became New Mexico, and pulled out the date. “Late in the seventeenth century.”
    “My ancestors held land in Taos before the Indians rebelled.”
    “That’s what makes this so exciting for me.” Carly leaned forward with an eagerness she couldn’t hide. “I love working with a family line that has roots deep in a state’s history. Do you know the name of the original holder of the ancestral land grant?”
    “Juan de los Dios Oñate.”
    Carly wondered if the older woman knew that “de los Dios” most often meant a bastard child. De Jesús was another popular name for the fatherless. The custom came from centuries earlier when marriage was expected only of noblemen, but conception came to all classes of women. The luckiest of the noble bastards found favor with their aristocratic fathers. Apparently Juan de los Dios Oñate had been one of the lucky ones. Land grants hadn’t been handed out to people who didn’t have influence with the Spanish court.
    “Do you—” began Carly.
    A sharp gesture from Winifred cut off the words. She leaned toward the bed, staring intently. Sylvia’s head turned slowly toward the room. Her dark eyes were open, and as vacant as the wind.
    “What is it, querida ?” Winifred said gently to her sister. “Did you hear the new voice? This is Miss Carolina May. She has come to write our family history. All of it.” Winifred’s smile was as predatory as her voice was soothing. “There will be justice, dear sister. On the grave of our mother the curandera, I promise this.”

TAOS
MONDAY MORNING
6
    DAN SHUT THE WEATHERED DOOR OF THE TAOS MORNING RECORD BEHIND HIM . HE nodded to the receptionist-secretary whose improbable red hair defied the lines in her face. She’d worked for the Record longer than Dan had been alive and her hair color never changed.
    “Those better not be doughnuts,” she said, sniffing the air hopefully. “My doctor told me to watch the sugar.”
    “I never touch doughnuts,” Dan lied, heading for the editor’s door.
    “Huh. There’s powdered sugar on your lips.”
    “Oops. Snow. That’s it—snow.”
    Smiling, shaking her head, the woman went back to typing.
    Dan walked down the hallway. The uneven floor was the legacy of centuries of use and the random settling of the earth beneath the building. The door to the editor’s office was ajar for the simple reason that the doorframe itself was warped.
    Gus looked up. As usual, there was a telephone pressed to his ear. He held up two fingers.
    Two minutes.
    Dan set the box of doughnuts on the desk, poured himself a mug of the black sludge Gus called coffee, and looked over the framed front pages in