St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

“Want to come to dinner?”
    “Sure. I’ll cook.”
    “I was kidding. I don’t want you to get sick.”
    “I won’t. I’ve been inoculated against stuff you can’t even dream of.”
    “You sure? I’m afraid Marti’s coming down with it. She looked pale this morning.”
    “What do you want me to fix?”
    “Garlic chicken,” Gus said instantly.
    “When do you want to eat?”
    “Six. If I’m not there—”
    “I’ll leave it in the oven on warm,” Dan said, “just like Mom used to.”
    “You don’t have to. Really. I was just kidding.”
    The shadow of a smile flickered over Dan’s mouth. “I want to. I can’t stop or even slow down the train wreck of international politics, but I can see that my brother and his family get a warm meal when they’re sick.”
    Gus didn’t know whether to smile or cry. The buzz of his intercom kept him from having to decide. He cleared his throat and held down the button. “Yeah?”
    “A Ms. Carolina May to see you.”
    “What does she want?”
    “Miss Winifred Simmons y Castillo has hired her to research the Castillo family.”

TAOS
MONDAY MORNING
7
    CARLY GLANCED AROUND THE CLEAN , WORN RECEPTION AREA OF THE TAOS MORNING Record . Two chairs that looked like they were left over from the Spanish Inquisition sat side by side to the left of the receptionist’s desk. An unopened copy of today’s newspaper lay on a low coffee table in front of the chairs. Through a glass door on the right she could see a narrow hallway that presumably led to the newsroom and/or the editor’s office.
    There was barely enough room to swing a cat. Like the old adobe ranch house, this space had been made for people who were smaller than the norm today.
    “Ms. May?”
    Carly turned from her appraisal of the old building to find a much more modern creation. She took him in with the speed of someone who makes a living out of summarizing people. Mid-thirties, maybe forty. Easily six feet tall, probably more. Good shoulders beneath a turtleneck and leather jacket, long legs in a pair of worn-soft Levi’s and scuffed hiking boots, dark hair, the face of a fallen angel, and green eyes that had seen hell. Whatever his history was, it hadn’t been written in smiles.
    “Mr. Salvador?” She walked toward him, smiling, her hand extended. “It’s good of you to—”
    “I’m Dan Duran,” he cut in, shaking her hand briskly and releasing it the same way. “Gus is on the phone. Follow me.”
    She noticed a very slight unevenness in the first few steps he took. His left leg was stiff.
    “Are you a reporter?” she asked, catching up and walking alongside him in the narrow hallway.
    “No.”
    She waited a few moments, then ignored the man’s lack of invitation to chat. “Rancher? Artist? Skier? Cop?”
    “No.”
    “Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?”
    He glanced sideways at her. Something close to amusement changed the line of his mouth beneath at least a day’s worth of dark stubble. “Nope.”
    “Wow, a whole four letters in a single word,” Carly said. “Careful. You’re going to talk my arm off.”
    He glanced at the arm in question, and then at the woman, and wondered how someone with as much life and sass in her as Carolina May had chosen to make a career digging up graves. The thought of her with the gaunt, dour Miss Winifred made him shake his head.
    “What?” Carly asked.
    “Just imagining you with that old curandera.”
    “Who?”
    “Miss Winifred. She makes potions and lotions for half of Taos County.” She was also reputed to make spells and poisons, but Dan didn’t see any need to talk about it with a nosy outsider; his mother was often mentioned in the same breath with Winifred. Locally, both women were curanderas of great respect.
    “I didn’t know Winifred was a healer,” Carly said.
    “I didn’t say she was.”
    With that, Dan opened the door to Gus’s office and gestured Carly in.
    Frowning, she asked, “What does that mean?”
    He ignored her.
    Gus held up one finger.
    “He’ll be done in a minute,” Dan said. Then he gestured toward the wall of framed first pages. “Enjoy.”
    He turned to leave.
    Carly put her hand on his sleeve. “Wait,” she said in a low voice, not wanting to disturb the editor of the Taos newspaper. “Have you known Miss Winifred long?”
    “Yes.”
    “Were you raised here?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d like to interview you on the subject of—”
    “No.”
    “Don’t leave yet,” Gus said, pointing at