St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

have them by the short and curlies.” He finished his coffee and set the cup aside. “I’ll be in the Senator’s study going through papers.”
    She sighed. “Need any help?”
    “I’ll let you know if I do.”
    But before he let anyone read over his shoulder, he’d be certain that the Senator had died without confessing his sins in a private journal.

QUINTRELL RANCH
SUNDAY EVENING
5
    CARLY WALKED DOWN A HALLWAY IN THE OLD CASTILLO HOME . WITH EACH STEP SHE murmured into her lapel, where she wore a nearly invisible microphone that was attached to a digital recorder at her waist.
    “I wish the walls could talk,” she said quietly.
    The walls in question were adobe, more than two feet thick at the base, and older than the United States. At least, one of the walls was that old; it had once held up the front of the original Castillo ranch house. The other walls dated from the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when the Castillo in residence had been favored by the new nation of Mexico. With the new duties and authority came prosperity. The rectangular shape of a gracious Spanish-style home had been built around a courtyard alive with fruit trees and the silver dance of fountains.
    From what Carly had discovered, the Castillos’ enviable position had lasted only two decades, until New Mexico was ceded by Mexico to the United States after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Then the customs of the Spanish, the Indians, and their culturally mixed children known as genizaros had bowed before the onslaught of Navajo raiders, Kit Carson, and land-hungry citizens from the eastern coast of the young, brawling United States.
    “It seems so long ago to me,” Carly said in a soft voice, running her fingertips over the much-plastered surface of the adobe wall. “But it isn’t. Winifred’s grandmother lived through it.” What would it be like to know who your grandparents and great-grandparents were, what they felt, how they’d lived?
    But that was one thought Carly didn’t murmur into her microphone.
    “The Castillo family, or some member of it, continuously occupied this house since it was built,” she continued. “Then, after the new house was built by the Senator and his wife, the old house became basically a guest quarters. From the look of the furnishings—antique and in reasonably good condition except for the dust—the guest house hasn’t been used very much.”
    She continued down the hall, then hesitated at the door leading to the central courtyard. “It’s an odd feeling to see wooden doorsills worn concave by the passage of generations, doorways so small that I feel like ducking when I go through them, and I’m barely five foot four inches. Good food, good medicine, and suddenly bigger people are born to each generation.”
    With a hard tug, she opened, then pushed the door shut behind her. As she hurried across the courtyard, a few dead leaves lifted on the wind, curling around her ankles like a cold cat. She could have stayed warm by taking the longer route through the hallway-gallery that ran along the inner side of the rectangular house, but she felt the need for fresh air.
    Winifred might have invited her to live in the old place while she worked on the Quintrell history, yet Carly had the uneasy feeling that everyone else would rather she went home.
    When she’d arrived, the guest quarters weren’t fit for a rat—which according to one of the maids, the ranch had plenty of. Winifred had been furious about the state of the guest quarters because “everyone knew” Carly was coming today. Rather than being apologetic about the oversight, the maids were surly, saying they hadn’t been warned that the guest was coming a month early. Carly had overheard the maids talking flawless English with Winifred, but when it came to the forgotten guest, the language of the day was Spanish.
    Carly had started to respond in kind, then decided she could play the yo no comprendo game. So if Carly lacked something in the guest quarters—toilet paper for instance—she went to the main house and got it or asked Winifred to tell the maids what was needed. It was cumbersome, but worked well enough once Carly understood the game. The towels and sheets she’d requested were even clean, if old enough to vote.
    Besides, eavesdropping on the blond hispana maid and her buddy was just another way to fill in the gaps of the local story. At least Carly hoped it would be. The tirades and weeping about Alma’s