St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

the—”
    “Winifred hired you to do a Castillo history,” Dan cut in. “I don’t see how my mother fits into that.”
    “She’s part Castillo, that’s how.”
    “Winifred doesn’t see it that way. She’s only interested in past Castillos, not present ones.”
    Carly wanted to argue but couldn’t. He was right. Not once had Winifred showed any interest at all in the governor or his son, even though Castillo blood ran in them as surely as did Quintrell.
    “And you’re only interested in the present,” Carly said.
    Dan shrugged and nudged her toward his truck. “The present is where things happen. Like getting your SUV hauled to a garage for new shoes and a bath in paint remover.”
    “That’s such a load of crap.”
    He opened the truck door. “You don’t want your SUV fixed?”
    She climbed in and ignored the change in topic. As soon as he started the truck, she said, “You’re way too smart to believe that the present just invented itself without any help from the past.”
    “And you’re way too smart to believe that the past is more important than the possibilities of today.”
    Dan steered the truck down a block, turned onto a side street, and drove toward his little rental.
    Carly said something under her breath and leaned back into the seat, feeling twice her age. “Don’t tell me you thought I wouldn’t care about who your mother is.”
    “She’s my mother and John’s wife and a good woman who has helped a lot of kids become worthwhile adults. That’s who she is. Period.”
    He slowed for an ancient pickup truck that was hauling a load of willow poles. Blue-black smoke poured from the truck’s exhaust as it turned a corner and headed off at a right angle. The truck’s load shifted and shivered beneath the twine holding it in place. The peeled willow poles were between five and six feet tall and one to two inches thick. People in the valley had been using similar poles for fencing for a thousand years.
    “The fact that my maternal grandmother was a psychopathic liar and an addict who turned tricks for a fix doesn’t mean squat today,” Dan added. “Not to me and not to anybody else in town who matters.”
    He accelerated down the street.
    Carly bit the inside of her lip. It was one thing to think of Liza Quintrell as a wild child; it was quite another thing to think of her as a member of Dan’s family, his grandmother, the mother of his mother.
    An addict who turned tricks for a fix.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Why? It was long ago, far away, and besides, the bitch is dead.”
    “Whew. Did you know your grandmother?”
    “No. Before I was born, she was murdered by a nutcase wired on angel dust. Mom left home when she was fourteen. She married Dad when she was sixteen. I came along real quick after that.”
    “Why did she leave?”
    “It must have seemed better than staying with what her mother had become.”
    “Did the Senator help your mother?”
    Dan shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
    Carly waited.
    “My mother hates the Senator so much she won’t allow his name to be spoken in her house,” Dan said finally. “Dad thinks it’s because of the way her mother was treated, the hypocrisy of a womanizing son of a bitch getting his dick in a knot because his daughter does the nasty with any man who can get it up. Or maybe it was the fact that the Senator couldn’t find room for his fourteen-year-old granddaughter on a ranch the size of Delaware.” Dan shrugged. It didn’t make much sense to him; but then, he’d never had to live his mother’s life. “Whatever. Mom doesn’t talk about her mother or the Senator or her childhood as the daughter of a psychopath, an addict, and a whore.”
    Carly blew out a breath and wondered how a fourteen-year-old had supported herself until she married at sixteen; then Carly decided not to ask. She’d had enough of tiptoeing through the minefield of Dan’s family.
    For now, anyway.
    Dan turned onto a little side street that dead-ended in a pasture fence made of peeled willow poles held close together by wires. Unlike the poles on the slow truck, these were weathered gray, crooked, no two alike. There was no garage for the truck, not even a lean-to.
    Without waiting for Dan, Carly climbed out of the vehicle, shouldered her big purse, and looked around curiously. The cloudless sky was huge. The closest houses were several large pastures away. Snow covered the fields in shady places and melted on the dirt streets. Right now