Always Time to Die Read online

  “You do it all yourself, even the publication?”

  “Sure. Computers make it easy and the result can look as good as anything you buy in the store. But if my clients want more than, say, two hundred books, I job it out to a printer.”

  Dan looked at the fingers interlaced with his. “No ring.”

  “No husband. No fiancé.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  She tilted her head and looked at him. “No. How about you?”

  “No husbands or boyfriends.”

  “That’s a relief. What about women?”

  “I like them.”

  “Well enough to have one of your very own?”

  “Not so far,” he said.

  The corners of her mouth curved up slightly. She decided to give him some of his own conversational switches right back. “What do you think Sheriff Montoya will do?”

  “File and forget.”

  She laughed. “What would it take to catch you off-balance?”

  Dying children and a few slugs from a Kalashnikov. But saying that would start a conversation he didn’t want to have.

  “Did Winifred ever say how the rest of the family felt about the history she’d commissioned?” Dan asked.

  “No. But I figured out real quick that not everyone was on board with the idea.”

  “The rat on your pillow?”

  “Even before that.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “What happened?”

  “Nothing huge. When I got there, my room wasn’t ready, and when it was ready, it wasn’t exactly what I’d call the best room in either house. Alma was outright rude to me. Or maybe I’m just being oversensitive. The Senator’s death caught everyone by surprise.” She waved her free hand. “Whatever, only Winifred seemed glad to see me.”

  “Anyone else give you a hard time?”

  “The governor’s son is a jerk, but I don’t think it’s anything personal. Just his natural style.”

  “What about Anne Quintrell?” As Dan spoke, he absently ran his thumb up and down Carly’s index finger.

  “I was introduced to her after the funeral.” The feel of Dan’s thumb rubbing her skin sent a shiver of sensation over Carly. She swallowed and ignored it. “Anne Quintrell was polite. So was the governor. So was the rest of the staff, except for Alma. Maybe she was having a bad hair week.”

  Dan closed his eyes and began arranging and rearranging facts, possibilities, scenarios. While he thought fast, his thumb moved slowly back and forth, back and forth on Carly’s finger. The lazy rhythm worked its way into her blood, scattering her thoughts.

  “If you’re trying to distract me, you’re succeeding,” she said after a minute.

  “What?”

  She tugged at her hand. “This.”

  Dan looked at their interlaced fingers. “Too tight?”

  She slid her own thumb up and down his, stroking lazily. In the instant before he lowered his eyelids, she saw a flare of desire.

  “See what I mean?” she said. “It’s distracting.”

  “That’s one word for it.” After another slow stroke, he released her hand. “If Montoya tied you to a chair and grilled you like a lamb chop, what would you tell him about me?”

  She didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “I don’t know enough to be worth grilling.”

  Dan knew he should leave it that way.

  And he knew he wasn’t going to.

  TAOS

  LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  22

  LUCIA HEARD THE RUMBLE OF HER HUSBAND’S BIG FORD EXPEDITION, THE SLAM OF car doors, and the front door of her own house opening. Armando called to her in Spanish.

  “English, my heart,” she said, running out of the kitchen to meet him. “Otherwise the children will be left behind in school and you will be stuck with Anglos for lawyers and accountants.”

  Armando laughed and lifted Lucia in a big hug, enjoying the trim warmth of her against his sturdy body. Although he and his wife didn’t agree on his career, they had real affection for one another. He’d had many women and would have many more. Only Lucia was his wife, the mother of his children.

  One of Armando’s bodyguards appeared at the front door. This man was slender, dressed in black, and carrying a slim black briefcase. Silently Armando gestured for him to enter.

  “Come with me,” Armando said to his wife.

  Puzzled, Lucia followed her husband out of the house to the big black vehicle parked in the front yard a few feet from the front door.

  “I can’t leave the children,” she said.

  “You can hear them from here.”

  At another silent gesture from Armando, the bodyguard opened his briefcase, took out a handheld electronic sweeper, and went to work.

  Armando closed the front door and turned to Lucia. “You had visitors last night. Were you with them the whole time?”

  “I made coffee. I went to the bedroom to get photos.”

  He hissed through his teeth.

  Shivering from more than the cold outside, Lucia waited for Armando to say something. He just rubbed her arms to warm them and stood with the air of a man waiting for something.

  A few minutes later the bodyguard came out of the house. “Es okay,” he said to Armando, mixing languages into a common border slang.

  Armando nodded and led his wife back into the warmth of the house.

  “Los niños, how are they doing?” Armando asked, closing the door behind him.

  Lucia forced herself to act like everything was normal, because for Armando it was.

  “They are at the top of their classes, even with this awful flu,” she said. “Your brother and father will be very pleased.” She looked at her husband’s pale brown eyes and black hair. Threads of gray were showing in the thick natural waves. The life he’d chosen was a brutal one. It showed in the deep lines of his face. “Are you hungry?”

  “For your posole and carne asada, always.” The response came easily, in spite of the hangover that made Armando’s head feel like the soccer ball in a World Cup match.

  His cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his back pocket, read the incoming caller ID, and shooed his wife into the kitchen. When she couldn’t overhear anything, he answered the call.

  “Bueno.” He listened, started to answer in Spanish, and thought of the kids in the back room. To them, English was still a second, often difficult language. Much safer to use it right now than Spanish. “Listen to me, Chuy,” he said in a low voice. “You will cross the border at the usual spot at the usual time. All is in place. Mano is at the drop house in Las Trampas. When he okays the load, the money is wired to Aruba. Your jefe is told when it’s done. Savvy?”

  Chuy understood.

  Armando punched a button to end the call.

  Immediately the cell phone rang again.

  He looked at the incoming number, swore under his breath, and dodged the call. The cell phone was necessary for his business, but it was worse than a nagging wife. He set the signal to vibrate and shoved the unit into his back pocket. Now that he’d talked to Chuy, he didn’t have anything urgent to worry about until tonight, when the load would arrive.

  Armando went to see the children, treating his nephews as warmly as his own kids. All of them were pale, tired, and cranky. He took temperatures the old-fashioned way, cheek to cheek. Joking, teasing out smiles, he straightened blankets and let each child discover the sweets he’d hidden in various pockets.

  Lucia stood in the doorway, watching, smiling despite her fear each time Armando came home. It had been years since violence last exploded in the Sandoval smuggling trade, but Lucia would never forget the sight of Armando’s cousin and best friend bleeding on the floor of Armando’s house, dying with sixteen slugs in him. The miracle was that none of the children had been hit by the hail of bullets coming from the front yard.

  After that Lucia had moved into a separate house and had taken a job to support herself and their young child. To this day the sound of gunfire turned
her stomach. She couldn’t make Armando change jobs, she wouldn’t divorce him, and she feared that someday he would be murdered in her house in front of the horrified eyes of his own children.

  Armando kissed and tickled the smallest child, a girl with her father’s eyes and her mother’s luminous skin. Then he stood, stretched wearily, and told himself he had to cut back on the homemade pulque and cocaine. The hangovers he’d thrown off with ease twenty years ago now hunted him throughout the day. Right now he should be sleeping at his luxurious condo in Taos, getting ready for the dangerous time when the heroin arrived and had to be repackaged for his distributors.

  But first he had to know what Dan Duran had been doing in his wife’s home on Monday night.

  He followed Lucia into the kitchen, saw the icy beer and hot soup waiting for him, and hoped his stomach was up to the job. He sat and ate a few tentative bites, then more eagerly. Even the beer tasted good. Maybe it was food rather than youth he needed. When his soup bowl was empty he turned to the carne asada. He ate the way he did everything, with speed and no subtlety.

  “More?” Lucia asked.

  He shook his head.

  She sat down next to him with a cup of coffee for herself and a smile for him.

  Armando ignored the cell phone vibrating against his butt. “Tell me who was here last night.”

  “Dan Duran and Ms. May.”

  “The old curandera’s historian?”

  Lucia nodded, not at all surprised that Armando knew who Carly was, much less that she’d been in the house. Armando’s business required that strangers were investigated instantly and family watched as a matter of course.

  Armando drank the last of his beer and wiped his mouth carelessly on his hand before he remembered where he was. He grabbed the faded cloth napkin next to his bowl and scrubbed his hand and lips. Once he’d been impatient with Lucia’s efforts to improve his manners and English. Now he knew she was right; if he ever wanted a better, less violent life for his children, they had to be raised to fit in with a culture that was larger than the ancient hispano way of life.

  “What did Duran want?” Armando asked.

  “It wasn’t him, it was Carly who had all the questions,” Lucia said.

  Armando’s face tightened. “About me?”

  “No, no, no!” Lucia said instantly. “About the old times, when the Senator was young and Sylvia still laughed and danced with her husband. About the yearly barbecues and the babies.”

  Armando wasn’t convinced. “And Duran, what did he ask?”

  “Nothing. He nearly fell asleep on the couch. He was keeping a pretty lady company, that’s all.”

  Armando grunted. “What did they want to know about the governor?”

  “Listen to me.” Lucia leaned forward and touched her husband’s face, ensuring his attention. She didn’t want any trouble for Dan or Carly, who had only been doing as Miss Winifred asked. “I talked about nothing more recent than Liza.” As always, Lucia crossed herself when she mentioned the Senator’s tragic daughter.

  “What else did Duran say to you? Think hard, mi esposa.”

  She clenched her hands together and tried not to scream at her husband’s bloodsucking career, a way of life that demanded he trust no one, even his wife.

  “I think he…yes, he asked where Eduardo’s wife is.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m raising Eduardo’s nephews.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “Everyone in the pueblo knows and his mother teaches there. It’s not a secret.”

  Armando’s eyes narrowed. It was true, but it wasn’t the only possible truth. “What did you tell him?”

  “What you told me to say if anyone asks. She is in Mexico with the girls.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He didn’t ask more questions about her?”

  “No,” Lucia said firmly.

  Armando drummed his fingers on the worn wood table. “What else did he ask about?”

  “Nothing. I talked with Carly and then they left.”

  Lucia wasn’t about to mention the money Dan had given to her. Armando would be furious that she took money from Miss Winifred when his wife wouldn’t accept money from her own husband.

  She couldn’t. To Lucia, every dollar he made dripped violence. She couldn’t change her husband or the nature of his business, but she could refuse to benefit from it.

  Armando relaxed. “Bueno.”

  The phone vibrated against his butt again. He pulled the unit out, checked the window, and knew he had to leave. He turned to his wife.

  “Every time Duran is close to you or your car or your home, you call me.” Armando grabbed her chin in his hand. “I mean it, Lucia. Every damn time.”

  She didn’t doubt it. “I will call you. But what could he do? He’s still recovering from a climbing accident.”

  Armando’s smile reminded Lucia of everything she hated about the drug business.

  “A climbing accident?” he asked, then laughed.

  He was still laughing when he got in the Expedition and slammed the door behind him.

  Lucia stood in the doorway, shivering, knowing that Armando had had something to do with Dan’s injury.

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  TUESDAY EVENING

  23

  MELISSA OPENED THE FRONT DOOR. “HELLO, DAN, CARLY.” THOUGH SHE HADN’T expected either one, she smiled and stepped back to clear the doorway. “Come in. How’s your mother, Dan? Lucia keeps talking about the miracle she’s working with her tutoring.”

  “Mom is like you, always busy, always beautiful.”

  Melissa’s smile broadened. “You be sure to give her a hug from me when you see her. And that handsome father of yours, too.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  The housekeeper turned to Carly. “Winifred said something about your car needing work and you would be staying in town…?”

  “How did she know?” Carly asked before she could think better of it.

  Melissa tried not to laugh. “Blaine was in town running errands for the ranch. He heard about your car getting trashed from the mechanic who heard about it from the tow truck driver. Living in a small town takes getting used to.” Then she shook her head and said irritably, “It’s that snowboarding riffraff. They take designer drugs and then they do whatever they want and think the townsfolk shouldn’t get upset because they’re spending so much money here. I’ll bet the sheriff said as much, didn’t he?”

  It took Carly a moment to sort out the syntax and realize that Melissa was giving out the standard full-time resident’s complaint about the high-living tourists who brought money and irritation to the town in equal measure.

  “The sheriff didn’t mention anything about snowboarding,” Carly said.

  “Well, I hope your insurance covers the damage. Cars are so expensive, and we can’t do without them, no matter how little we earn.” She shook her head. “I hope you won’t have to delay your work with Winifred over this. She’s not getting any younger.”

  “Dan offered himself as a taxi service while my car is being fixed,” Carly said. “I’m just here to pick up my stuff.”

  “But what about the history project?”

  “This won’t put me behind at all,” Carly assured the housekeeper. “I’ll stay in town so Dan won’t have to make the drive out here several times a day. Instead of interviews, which Winifred shouldn’t be giving until her cough gets better, I’ll concentrate on newspaper archives and scanning in the photos and documents she has already provided.”

  “Documents?” Melissa frowned. “Winifred didn’t mention anything like that to me. What kind of documents? Some papers are certainly too important to be removed from the house without Governor Quintrell’s permission.”

  And both women knew that permission wouldn’t happen.

  “I’m talking about simple family documents,” Carly said. “Marriage and birth and death certificates,
diplomas, old letters, memorabilia such as wedding invitations and special-occasion greeting cards, report cards, a child’s first drawing, whatever the family thought important enough to add to the ‘box in the attic.’ Or boxes, in Winifred’s case. Sylvia apparently was quite the collector before her stroke.”

  “Oh. Well, I suppose that’s okay.” But Melissa was still frowning. “I should probably make a record of whatever you take with you.”

  “Let’s ask Winifred,” Dan said, easing Carly past the housekeeper. “They’re her documents, after all. Please tell her that we’re on the way to see her.”

  Melissa stood for a moment, undecided. Then she went to the intercom that connected Sylvia’s suite to the rest of the house.

  Dan didn’t wait for Melissa’s permission. He simply led Carly through the hallway that ended in Sylvia’s suite.

  “Melissa wasn’t real thrilled, was she?” Carly said.

  “From what I hear, Governor Quintrell isn’t as easy a man to work for as the Senator was. Melissa is probably reporting daily to her new boss. Everyone will be nervous until they’re sure their jobs are secure.”

  “And housekeepers tend to think they run everything—or should.”

  “In Melissa’s case, it’s pretty close to the truth,” Dan said. “She got the job from her mother. I think one of her grandmothers worked for the Senator, too. But then, so have most of the old families in the valley, one way or another.”

  As Dan and Carly approached the closed entrance to Sylvia’s suite, both of them started shedding everything they could and still be reasonably decent. Dan stopped at the black T-shirt he wore beneath his wool shirt and jacket. Carly wasn’t that lucky. She’d come back to pick up her equipment and some clothes. She really hadn’t expected to see Winifred tonight, so she was wearing a knitted silk body shirt under a heavy pullover sweater, plus coat. She thought about leaving the sweater on, but knew she wasn’t going to. She’d been through enough for one day.

  From the corner of his eye, Dan watched her struggle out of the heavy forest-green sweater. When she finally managed to yank it over her head, he forgot to breathe. Something that was thin, midnight blue, and fit like skin itself covered her from shoulders to wrists, and neck to waistline and beyond.