St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

older. I’m saving them for later. Winifred only—”
    “Wants Castillo history,” Dan cut in. “Got it. On to Generation Three, children of the Senator and Sylvia. Whoa. There’s a lot of stuff. Once the Senator became a senator, he couldn’t take a dump without the paper doing a two-page spread.”
    “Now there’s a visual I could live without.”
    Shaking her head, Carly went back to sorting the Sandoval photos on one of the long tables. She’d been so obsessed with recording Winifred’s material that she hadn’t done anything else. Now it was time to see if she could fill in some gaps. While many of the photos weren’t dated, a lot of them had writing on the back. She arranged them in rough order, oldest to newest.
    “Holler when you find something worth recording,” Carly said. “I’ve got all the birth dates for the kids, but I’m really short on photos of Josh. Older brother Andrew got all the camera time. I’m hoping something will turn up in the Sandoval family photos at the yearly barbecue.”
    “Don’t hold your breath. From all that’s been left out of the newspaper, Josh must have been a hell-raiser from the time he could walk.”
    “Too bad there wasn’t more than one newspaper. I’d like to see more of the Spanish and Native American side of the local history.”
    Dan winced at the thought of what more newspapers would have meant in terms of archiving. Even with his nifty, mostly homemade program, the process still took time.
    “The white-bread approach wears thin in the sixties,” he said. “There’s more ink for the hispano politicos, and more hispano politicos in areas that have a big Anglo population.”
    “Thus all the yearly barbecues,” Carly said, lining up the photos. “Taking the pulse of the hispano voters over a rack of ribs and a keg of beer.”
    “It worked. Without support from the hispano communities, the Senator wouldn’t have made it, and neither would his son. Josh Quintrell is the first Anglo governor New Mexico has had in years. It was a close race. Without the Sandovals he couldn’t have made it.”
    “The same Sandovals that run drugs and hold cockfights?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Are you saying that the governor is involved in the drug trade through the Sandovals?”
    “If by involved you mean getting paid on a regular schedule, probably not. If you mean accepting political contributions and having a damn good idea where the funds came from and how they were laundered, yes.”
    “I haven’t read anything like that in any newspaper.”
    From overhead came the slam of the side door, followed by the sound of footsteps and heavy rolls of paper being moved across the floor.
    Dan glanced at the ceiling and then back at the computer. “You won’t read about laundered political contributions in this newspaper, no matter how many rolls of paper Gus uses up.” Dan shrugged. “Unless someone gets caught dirty with a bag of cash, of course, but it’s not likely. The Quintrell family might be a lot of things that I don’t like, but stupid isn’t one of them.”
    “No wonder Winifred wants to distance herself from them.”
    “Winifred would have hated any family her sister married into.” Dan typed rapidly, scanned the screen, and typed again. “Besides, the Castillos are a lot closer to the Sandovals by blood and choice. And it’s not like the Quintrells are the first politicians on the planet to accept laundered money in political contributions. Hell, in the bad old days on the East Coast and in Chicago, the pols didn’t care if the cash was laundered, just so it was plentiful and green.”
    “You have a sour view of politicians.”
    “Realistic,” he corrected. “And don’t forget bankers and lawyers. One runs the laundries and the other facilitates the process. Then they take the squeaky-clean cash and invest it in legitimate enterprises on behalf of the illegitimate. Welcome to the real world, honey, where nothing is the way it seems and everybody’s hand is in somebody else’s pocket.”
    Carly grimaced and kept looking at the backs of photos. Some were dated. Some had names.
    One of the names was J. Quintrell.
    She flipped the photo over, picked up a magnifying glass, and went hunting for the younger Josh. He’d been caught in the act of upending a bottle of beer over another boy’s head. Both young men—teenagers, probably—were laughing and leaning drunkenly on each other. In the background, the Senator watched with a grim line