St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

eagerly.
    “My grandfather and grandmother were both Castillos.” As Winifred spoke, she sorted through the herbs and potions and salves Dan had brought. “They weren’t close enough in blood to bother the church, and not distant enough to divide up the Oñate grant even more. My grandmother died giving birth to her first child, my mother María. María was fourteen when she married the son of a blue-eyed Anglo bandit. Not that we thought of our father that way, a bandit. Hale Simmons came from a long line of men who’d lost one war after another, either the Civil War or older wars in Scotland. Those men didn’t have much use for governments and laws that took what a man earned.”
    Dan’s mouth took on a sardonic curve. Nothing much had changed. Nothing ever would. The law benefited those in power. Lawlessness benefited those without power. The good and the law-abiding got ground up between law and outlaw. People who tried to change that woke up with bullets in their body.
    If they woke up at all.
    “The Castillos didn’t obey any laws they didn’t have to. That was the way of New Mexico, where no government really got a grip on the rural people,” Winifred said. “Everyone thinks it’s different now. It isn’t.” She handed an envelope to Carly. “You asked for pictures of Sylvia. Here are some school photos, wedding photos, birthday and Christmas, that sort of thing. The last photos, the ones of me in the garden, were from 1964. I came back in to the ranch for good the following year, when Sylvia had her stroke. The Senator was going to put her in an institution, but I told him to forget it. He needed the Sandoval vote to get elected again, and I’d see that he lost it unless Sylvia stayed at the ranch.”
    Dan was glad that he’d learned to have a poker face at an early age. He’d always wondered why the Senator hadn’t walked away from his hopelessly ill wife. Now he knew.
    And now he wondered how deep Winifred’s ties to the Sandovals really were.
    “Could you have done that?” Carly asked.
    “Yes.” Winifred looked straight at Dan. “Castillos and Sandovals have intermarried for three hundred years. Two of my father’s sisters married into the Sandoval family. One Sandoval in Mexico. Another in Colombia. They had no use for Yankee laws. Their sons and daughters and grandchildren feel the same. They remember a time when poppy and peyote, morning glory and cocoa leaf were legal, the medicines of the curanderos. They remember when they walked tall and Anglos were carpetbaggers.”
    “That was a long time ago,” Dan said quietly.
    “Not to those who lost. To them, it’s new and bitter. It always will be until the wrongs of the past are righted.”
    “That will never happen,” Dan said. “The remembered wrongs will always be bigger than anything the present can offer as payment.”
    “I don’t believe that.” Winifred’s voice was thin, harsh.
    Carly looked between the two of them, surprised by the undercurrents. She’d never been in a family where history ran so close and hard beneath the surface of today. It was exciting and…unsettling. She felt like she was walking through a minefield of past emotions that might explode at any instant.
    Winifred let out a long breath and wiped her forehead on the back of her arm. Silver gleamed from the thick cuff bracelet she wore. She looked at the herbs spread across the coffee table and felt much older than her years. She felt ancient.
    He’s wrong.
    I will have my vengeance.
    Winifred picked up the small clay pot that was surrounded by herbs and went to Sylvia’s bedside.
    Silence grew until Carly was sure everyone could hear her breathe. She cleared her throat and tried to find a neutral topic. Her glance fell on the packages of herbs.
    “Is that what your mother was growing in her greenhouse?” Carly asked Dan. “Herbs and such?”
    “Herbs, pepper and tomato seedlings, garlic and onion starts, even some rare kinds of beans,” he said. And some other things best left unmentioned. “At seven thousand feet, the growing season is short. Mom gives her garden a head start.”
    Carly opened her mouth to ask another question.
    “Do you need anything else?” Dan asked Winifred quickly. “Mom will be happy to send whatever you want.”
    “All I need is luck and time.” Then, to Carly, “Spit it out, girl. I don’t have all night.”
    “I just wondered who taught Mrs. Duran about herbs and potions.”
    “I did, but she has