St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

than bury the dead and pray for the living.
    Maybe Carly had a point. If you investigated the past instead of the present, at least the blood was already dry.
    Together Dan and Carly quickly described and catalogued six daguerreotypes. When they came to the seventh, Dan felt like a hunter that had just spotted dinner.
    “I know that one,” he said, pointing to an image of a bride and groom. “I’ve seen it before.”
    “Where?” Carly demanded. “Winifred ignored it when I asked questions.”
    “Newspaper archives. I can’t remember if it was a drawing or a photograph of the original daguerreotype. But that’s the first Andrew Jackson Quintrell and his bride, Isobel Quintrell y Castillo. Only after her marriage, she was careful to use an Anglicized version of her name—Isobel Castillo Quintrell. So the daguerreotype was taken in 1865, New Mexico Territory, the year of their marriage. Probably taken in Santa Fe, but I can’t be sure. The article might name the photographer, or daguerreotypist, or whatever they were called, and will certainly give a date for the marriage.”
    Carly grinned and planted a smacking kiss on Dan’s cheek. “Fantastic! Has anyone ever told you you’re a genius?”
    “Kiss me again and you can call me anything you want.”
    “Oh, the temptation.”
    “The kiss or the name-calling?”
    “Yes.”
    He pulled her close with startling speed, kissed her lazily, thoroughly, and released her with a slow smile. “Let the name-calling begin.”
    Carly couldn’t catch her breath, much less use it to yell at the man who had just showed her that when it came to kissing, she had a few things left to learn. The thought was dizzying.
    “No comment?” he asked.
    “Does ‘Whew’ count?”
    His hand snaked around her nape. “Want to go for ‘Wow’?”
    Her body said yes.
    Her mind said not yet.
    Dan read her well. He released her with a slow caress along her jawline. “What comes after the daguerreotypes?”
    “The what?” Abruptly she looked away so that she wouldn’t get lost in the hothouse green of his eyes. “Ambrotypes.” She let out a long breath. “You’re a very disturbing man.”
    “Thank you.”
    “It wasn’t a compliment.”
    “Sure it was. When you’re concentrating, it would take dynamite to break through. Therefore, I’m dynamite.”
    She laughed almost helplessly. Then she just laughed. It had been a long time since she’d enjoyed a man as much as Daniel Duran. In truth, it had been forever.
    “If I’m going to earn Winifred’s bonus for finishing early, I have to stay focused,” Carly said. The slow trailing of her fingertips down his stubble-rough cheek said focus wasn’t easy right now. “Help me out, okay?”
    He nodded, brushed a kiss over her fingertips, and turned back to the computer. “Ambrotypes.”
    She sighed. “Right. Ambrotypes.” Very gently she picked up the first one in her cotton-clad fingers. “Eighth image. Size, quarter plate. Case is probably mid-1850s. The collodion is very badly damaged and curling away from the glass in fragments. I doubt that restoration is possible. In any case, Winifred doesn’t want to pay for it. The best I can do is photograph the ruined image and play with it digitally.”
    Dan typed while Carly photographed and mourned the ambrotypes that hadn’t survived the passage of time. Sometimes cheaper and faster wasn’t good in the long run; daguerreotypes survived intact while ambrotypes were reduced to little more than black flakes and glass.
    “How long were ambrotypes popular?” he asked when she paused.
    “Less than a decade, thank God. Tintypes are a lot more durable.” She shook her head. “It’s almost not worth the hard drive space, but you never know. Some bright tech type might eventually figure out a way to resurrect the images.”
    When Carly reached for the first tintype, she glanced sideways at Dan. From the way he was acting, the kiss had never happened. Even as she told herself that she couldn’t complain, that he was doing exactly what she’d asked, she looked at his mouth. Soft and hungry over hers, hard to forget, impossible not to want again.
    “You’re distracting me,” Dan said without turning from the computer.
    “Work on your concentration.”
    He snickered.
    “Image twenty-one,” she said briskly. “Tintype, half plate, brown tint, very probably Isobel Quintrell or a close relative based on the line of the chin, the space between the eyes, and the