St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

repeated. Then she understood. Her breath came in raggedly. “You don’t really think anyone would rig my files to explode?”
    “Paranoia is just part of my job description.”
    Carly swallowed hard. “What job is that?”
    “I’m on vacation.”
    Dan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folding knife. A flick of his thumb opened up a wicked blade. He didn’t really expect anything lethal in the box, but he didn’t want to die with a surprised look on his face. Gently, patiently, he slit each flap where it joined the box until nothing visibly attached the flaps to the box. The flaps shifted and slid to the floor.
    Nothing on top but papers.
    “How does it look?” he asked.
    She cleared her throat. “Normal.”
    “About as full as it was the last time you closed it?”
    “I guess so. I don’t stuff the boxes. It creases everything.”
    “Okay.” He casually riffled through the papers inside. No wires. No rats. Not even a mouse turd. “Looks good. Check it out for anything obviously missing.”
    Carly crouched next to him and flipped through the box. Notebooks, genealogical forms, manila envelopes of photos or documents labeled as to approximate decade and/or family relationship. There wasn’t anything missing, but something wasn’t right.
    “Someone has been through this,” she said.
    “You sure?” he asked without looking up from his study of the remaining boxes.
    “Yes. I’m totally anal when it comes to my work,” she said. “Genealogy and family history are built on small facts. If you don’t organize, organize, organize every single little piece of information you find, you’ll drive yourself crazy looking for proof of something that you’ve already researched and nailed down—and then put the document in the wrong place. But in this box, an envelope holding documents is mixed up with the photo envelopes. The decades are out of order on the photo envelopes. It’s not a big thing,” she added, rearranging envelopes as she spoke, “but it’s real.”
    “Anything missing?”
    “No.”
    “Check these out.”
    She looked up. The other cartons were open. She was pleased to see that the flaps were still attached to the boxes. She started going through the contents quickly.
    “Same thing on all of these,” she said after a few minutes. “Nothing missing. Everything not quite in order. Wonder what they were looking for. Or maybe they were just nosy.”
    Dan stacked the three cartons on one another and picked them up as a unit. “I’ll put these in the truck.” Then he saw the look on her face. “What?”
    “I was thinking of breaking into a chorus of how nice it is to have a man around the house. I usually lift those suckers one at a time.”
    “I’m too lazy to make that many trips. Get the door for me, will you?”
    Carly grabbed a camera case and a briefcase and trotted after him, opening doors as needed. They repeated the process until she had everything she needed but her suitcase. Dan picked it up and headed for the door.
    “Wait,” she said. “I forgot my pajamas.”
    He smiled slowly. “Don’t feel you have to wear any on my account.”
    “Ha ha.” She grabbed the pajamas from the bedspread and then recoiled with a gasp.
    Instantly Dan was between her and the bed.
    No rat.
    No gore.
    Just a note made from letters cut out of newspaper headlines:

    DO N T C o M E
    B A c K

SANTA FE
TUESDAY NIGHT
24
    THE GOVERNOR ’ S MANSION HAD BEEN DESIGNED TO INVITE VISITORS TO BE COMFORTABLE and learn about New Mexico’s distinctive art and artists. The national TV personality pacing the parlor and waiting to talk to the governor wasn’t gracious, comfortable, or artistic. She was, however, distinctive. Jeanette Dykstra had a huge national following for her television show Behind the Scenes, a combination of gossip, speculation, ambush interviews, and “news” of the sort that gave journalism a bad name.
    Anne Quintrell set her teeth delicately, pasted on a smile, and walked toward the small-screen bitch queen. Dykstra looked older offscreen, harder, almost skeletal. It was the tyranny of TV’s added twenty pounds, which resulted in a constant diet for people who made their living in front of a camera.
    Anne understood the skinny edict. What she didn’t understand was why women with brown eyes and olive skin thought they looked good as a bleached-crispy blonde.
    “Ms. Dykstra, I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” Anne said. “My secretary didn’t