St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

paying you isn’t worth what it will cost you to earn it.”

TAOS
MONDAY NIGHT
14
    CARLY TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ON THE BUMPY RIDE TO TAOS . SHE just pushed her little SUV to keep pace with Dan’s truck ahead of her. But every time his brake lights flashed red, she saw the rat’s blood smeared across her pillow.
    Whatever Miss Winifred is paying you isn’t worth what it will cost you to earn it.
    With an involuntary shudder, Carly shoved the words and the images out of her mind.
    “Just somebody’s idea of a sick joke.” She clenched her hands on the steering wheel. “That’s all.”
    But no matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t quite believe it. The idea that someone she didn’t know hated her that much was frightening.
    For an instant a small graveyard flared into life, pinned by the lights of Dan’s truck while he turned left. The afterimage on Carly’s eyes was a cascade of white crosses festooned with vivid plastic flowers, bound in ribbons and silence, standing vigil around a fresh mound of dirt and rocks. There was no tarp, no grave gouged out of frozen earth. This burial had been aboveground.
    Brake lights burned in the silvery darkness ahead. Dan’s truck turned right and parked under an old cottonwood. He got out, shut the truck’s door, and waited for Carly’s little white SUV to park nearby. When she got out, she looked doubtfully at the small adobe house. Only one light showed in the window.
    “Did you call ahead?” Carly asked.
    “Yes.” He wondered if Winifred knew how worried Lucia’s husband would be when he discovered Dan had visited his wife. Then Dan wondered if Winifred trusted him not to bug Lucia’s house. After all, it had been Sandovals who ultimately took in his mother when her own mother was murdered.
    “You’re sure Lucia will see me?” Carly asked.
    “She’ll see you,” Dan said neutrally. “She wants to please Miss Winifred.”
    Carly grimaced. “Great. Another reluctant interview.”
    “You don’t have to do it. You could—”
    “Get in my car and go back to where I belong,” she cut in impatiently. She’d heard it all before from him. She didn’t like hearing it any better now. “News bulletin, Mr. Duran. I belong right here, doing my job.”
    “News bulletin, Ms. May. People don’t like outsiders poking into their private affairs.”
    “Oh, bull. People line up to tell me their stories.”
    The wind lifted, swirled. She shivered despite her jacket. At the corner of her eyes, just beyond her vision, she kept seeing reflections of blood gleaming. Yet when she turned quickly there was nothing to see but Dan, looming over her like a stone monument.
    If he hadn’t kept her from a nasty fall down the cellar stairs, she’d be wondering if he’d used one of the rats trapped in the archives to decorate her pillow.
    She shuddered again.
    Dan discovered he didn’t have the heart to see the naïve little busybody shiver when he could make her comfortable. “Come on. Let’s get inside before you freeze.”
    Lucia opened the door as soon as Dan knocked. If rumor was correct, she was some kind of cousin to his mother. Right or wrong, it didn’t matter to him. He didn’t want anything to do with the man who had fathered his mother and abandoned her before she was even born. Sperm donor. Nothing familial. Certainly nothing personal.
    “Come in,” Lucia said. She had the face of a woman whose life had never been easy. “I have coffee, if you like.”
    Dan thanked her and made introductions. He didn’t miss the edgy speculation in Lucia’s eyes when she met Carly.
    “Miss Winifred asked me to talk to you,” Lucia said, “but she didn’t say what I was supposed to talk about.”
    “Your family has been in the valley as long as the Castillos and longer than the Quintrells,” Carly said.
    Lucia didn’t say anything.
    Carly searched the other woman’s intent dark eyes and admired the single black braid that lay heavily over one shoulder. Her features were an intriguing mix of Old World Spanish and New World Native American. Her skin was luminous despite the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes and the brackets of unhappiness around her mouth.
    “I’m interested in stories of the old days that were passed down to you by your parents and grandparents,” Carly said, “or pictures you might have of the land and the people generations ago.”
    “Ah, the past,” Lucia said, breathing out in relief. “ Sí . Yes.