Always Time To Die (7 page)

“Are you saying your mother didn’t?”

“Ask her.”

“I wanted to.”

“And?”

“Somehow I couldn’t get a word in edgewise without being rude.”

“That’s your answer,” he said.

“What?”

“A very polite way of saying ‘None of your business.’”

QUINTRELL RANCH
MONDAY EVENING

AT THE BACK OF THE QUINTRELL HOUSE
,
DAN PARKED HIS TRUCK
,
GOT OUT
,
AND
closed the metal door. The sound carried like a shot through the darkness. Dogs barked but didn’t rush out. The air was clean, sharp, an icy knife blade against his nostrils. He breathed deeply, savoring the moment. Snow swirled around his head and gently bit his cheeks.

It was a far cry from the toy-cluttered intimacy of Gus’s home, warm with love and the smell of the garlic chicken Dan had made for the Salvador family. The salad he’d carried in along with dinner was from Diana, as were the various herbal medicines she’d made to help them fight the flu.

Usually Diana made her own deliveries, or had John do it for her, but tonight Dan had volunteered—even though half of the packages had been destined for the Quintrell ranch. His willingness to drive miles over a rough road on a cold night had surprised everyone, including himself. Like attending the Senator’s funeral, Dan didn’t know why he’d acted on the push of his instincts and taken the herbs from his mother; he only knew that he had.

Maybe it was simply the full hunter’s moon overhead that made him restless, unable to sit in the small adobe house he’d rented on the edge of town or in the warmth of his parents’ kitchen or in the gentle chaos of Gus’s home. Outside of the buildings there were pastures glistening with snow and moonlight, dark fences and tree shadows where hunters waited in ambush, the soundless flight of an owl seeking a warm mouse. Dan had needed the living night in a way he didn’t question.

But even now, standing in the midst of it, he was still restless.

As he walked toward the kitchen entrance, scents from the packets of dried herbs he carried tickled his nose, bringing memories of hiking the valley and mountains with his mother during the snow-free months, gathering plants and seeds, shoots and roots and leaves. Some were used fresh, in teas and tinctures. Some were dried and pounded together with various fats to make salves, like the one weighing down his left jacket pocket right now. Others were tightly wrapped and stored for future use.

He’d never asked about the source of his mother’s countless recipes for easing the pain of daily living among people who were too poor to be able to afford—or who didn’t want to use—Anglo doctors and pills. Probably he hadn’t questioned simply because he’d learned by the time he was six that his mother appreciated silence more than chatter. As for questions, they’d better be about the present, not the past.

A stranger opened the back door in answer to Dan’s knock. The way the man moved and measured Dan told him that this was one of the unobtrusive bodyguards who kept the nutcases away from the governor of New Mexico. Just part of the price of being a public figure.

“I’m Dan Duran,” he said. “Miss Winifred is expecting me.”

“I’m new around here,” the man said, “so if you don’t mind, I’d like to see some photo ID.”

The bodyguard’s soft Georgia accent didn’t fool Dan; he could show ID or he could stand outside until he froze solid. And if he wanted to make an argument out of it, there was another bodyguard just inside the door, watching.

“No problem,” Dan said easily. He pulled out his wallet and showed his driver’s license.

The guard compared Dan’s face to the one on the license, nodded, and stepped aside. “Come in out of the cold. The cook left some coffee if you’re interested.”

The combination of no-nonsense bodyguard and Southwest hospitality with a southern accent almost made Dan smile. “Thanks, but I want to catch Miss Winifred before she goes to bed. I hear she’s feeling a little under the weather.”

“You know the way?”

“Is she with her sister?”

“Yes.”

“Then I know the way.”

Dan went through a kitchen that could have been in a medium-size restaurant. The ranch had always been a popular place to host contributors, supporters, reporters, fellow politicians, and anyone being wooed for money or votes. The place went from nearly deserted to overflowing with little warning. Folks in town could always tell by the helicopter traffic when there was something going on at the Senator’s—now the governor’s—ranch.

Tonight the kitchen looked like it hadn’t been used for much more than coffee and a light dinner for the family. Dan wondered if Carly had been included, or if she’d settled for a snack scrounged from the bottom of her big purse.

Sooner or later she’ll get the message that no one but Winifred wants her here.

He hoped it would be sooner, before anyone got angry enough to hurt the pretty woman with light in her eyes and laughter in her voice.

Though it had been years since Dan had been inside the ranch house, he hadn’t forgotten the turns and hallways and doors separating the kitchen from Miss Winifred’s suite. He didn’t meet anyone along the way. Melissa and Pete had probably already retired to their apartment. The maids had gone home. During the summer, the hired hands lived in the bunkhouse or in one of the house trailers tucked back in the trees along a curve of the hill. In winter, the buildings were empty.

When Dan had been younger, he’d spent the summer tending sheep and cattle on the ranch and learning to hunt with the Snead brothers. They’d been barely a decade older than he was, yet they’d been great teachers. Like their mother and grandfather, they were “wolfers,” hunters hired to keep predatory animals in check. Even as an adult, Jim managed to scratch out a living in the high country. Blaine had ended up in prison for armed robbery.

Long ago, far away. But, damn, those men could shoot.

At least, Dan had thought it was long ago and far away until he’d seen tracks on Castillo Ridge yesterday. A man’s tracks, and a dog’s. He couldn’t be certain who else had hiked several miles to watch from afar while the Senator was buried, but Dan knew that only someone with Jim Snead’s skill as a stalker could have gotten within fifty yards of Dan and not given himself away. Since Jim was the best man on the stalk in northern New Mexico, it figured that he was the one who left the tracks.

Wonder why he didn’t say hello.

Wonder why he was there, period.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t show himself. He didn’t want to answer questions.

Dan knocked lightly on the wide double doors that had been put in to accommodate a hospital bed. In the warm months, Winifred rolled her sister outside. If it made any difference to the patient, only Sylvia knew.

“Who is it?”

“The curandera’s son.”

The door opened slowly. Winifred’s black eyes looked Dan over. “Heard you were back. And busted up.”

“A little accident, that’s all.”

She made a sound that said she didn’t believe him, but she stepped aside. “Well, come on in.”

The heat of the room brought sweat out across Dan’s back. His glance went around the room, missing nothing, including a surprised Carly sitting on the floor surrounded by photos of all ages and sizes. He nodded coolly to her.

He didn’t like discovering that he’d driven forty minutes over frozen ruts because he hoped to catch a glimpse of a busybody’s smoke-and-gold eyes.

“You’re looking well, Miss Winifred,” Dan said. It was a lie; she looked tired, pale, and unusually gaunt.

“Wish I could say the same about you.” Despite her curtness, Winifred smiled. “I was hoping you’d come around to see an old lady. About time you remembered your manners.”

He shook his head. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

She gave a bark of laughter. “What did you expect, a miracle? God has better things to do than transform me. Give me a hug and I’ll forgive you for waiting so long to see me.”

Carefully Dan hugged the woman who was old enough to be his grandmother and tough enough to be Satan’s sister. Winifred was all sinew and bones and attitude. The realization that he’d missed her amazed him. Like the Snead brothers and the warmth of his parents’ kitchen, Winifred was part of a childhood that he only now was coming to value instead of simply accepting as a given.

“How is Mrs. Quintrell?” Dan asked.

“Winters are hard on her,” Winifred said, looking toward the bed.

Dan nodded as if he thought Sylvia noticed the difference in the view out her windows from spring to summer, fall to winter. But the changing seasons mattered to Winifred, so they had to matter to Sylvia.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure what Winifred believed in the silence of her own mind, but he knew that those beliefs made it possible for the old woman to face another day of caring for a sister who would never care about anything in this life.

“Well, what did your mother send me?”

“I’m an errand boy, not an herbalist,” Dan said. “All I know is the package with the red tape is for fever and cough. Mom said you’d probably be needing that if you have the flu that’s been working its way through the valley.”

“Let’s see what you have,” Winifred said, stifling a cough. “I can’t afford to be sick. Sylvia needs me. Without me, she’d die.”

Dan believed it. Certainly nothing else was keeping Sylvia alive.

He began pulling paper packets from his jacket pockets. Next came small baked-clay containers, plus one larger one, until finally his pockets were empty. He peeled off his jacket and hung it over his arm. The room was way too hot for anyone healthy.

Which explained why Carly was wearing a loose T-shirt and jeans, bare feet, and a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Her feet were narrow and high-arched. Bright purple toenails struck a note of rebellion. Something Celtic had been tattooed on the inside of her right ankle. He wondered what the design was, and if it would feel or taste different from the rest of her skin.

Deliberately he ignored that line of thought and looked back at Winifred. She picked up each package and container in turn, sniffed, and nodded approvingly.

“No one equals your mother,” Winifred said, “except maybe my mother’s grandmother, and there were whispers about the unfortunate state of her soul.”

Dan saw that Carly had quietly come to her feet and was standing nearby, close enough to catch what he and Winifred said.

Recording every word, I’ll bet.

He tried to be irritated, but whatever scent Carly was wearing smelled better than everything else in the room.

Innocence and spice. Hell of a combination.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Dan said. “Like I said, I’m only a delivery boy.”

Winifred laughed huskily. “You stay put and let me see you. Thought we’d lost you this time for sure.”

“Just a climbing accident,” he said. “Those volcanoes are tricky.”

She snorted and gave him a look that told him she knew what had really happened. Somehow, someway, she knew.

It has to be the Sandoval family,
Dan decided.
Smugglers’ grapevine. Drug runners’ grapevine. Curanderos’ grapevine.

Shit. I’d really hoped it wasn’t the Sandovals.

And he’d known it was.

That was why he was on “vacation” leave in northern New Mexico, where Sandoval men had been devils and their women had been patient saints for three hundred years.

Winifred nodded once, abruptly, and turned back to Carly.

Message delivered,
Dan thought.
Too bad I’m not sure which side of the law Winifred lives on.

“We were talking about my childhood memories,” Winifred said to Carly.

“Yes,” Carly said eagerly.

“My grandfather and grandmother were both Castillos.” As Winifred spoke, she sorted through the herbs and potions and salves Dan had brought. “They weren’t close enough in blood to bother the church, and not distant enough to divide up the Oñate grant even more. My grandmother died giving birth to her first child, my mother María. María was fourteen when she married the son of a blue-eyed Anglo bandit. Not that we thought of our father that way, a bandit. Hale Simmons came from a long line of men who’d lost one war after another, either the Civil War or older wars in Scotland. Those men didn’t have much use for governments and laws that took what a man earned.”

Dan’s mouth took on a sardonic curve. Nothing much had changed. Nothing ever would. The law benefited those in power. Lawlessness benefited those without power. The good and the law-abiding got ground up between law and outlaw. People who tried to change that woke up with bullets in their body.

If they woke up at all.

“The Castillos didn’t obey any laws they didn’t have to. That was the way of New Mexico, where no government really got a grip on the rural people,” Winifred said. “Everyone thinks it’s different now. It isn’t.” She handed an envelope to Carly. “You asked for pictures of Sylvia. Here are some school photos, wedding photos, birthday and Christmas, that sort of thing. The last photos, the ones of me in the garden, were from 1964. I came back in to the ranch for good the following year, when Sylvia had her stroke. The Senator was going to put her in an institution, but I told him to forget it. He needed the Sandoval vote to get elected again, and I’d see that he lost it unless Sylvia stayed at the ranch.”

Dan was glad that he’d learned to have a poker face at an early age. He’d always wondered why the Senator hadn’t walked away from his hopelessly ill wife. Now he knew.

And now he wondered how deep Winifred’s ties to the Sandovals really were.

“Could you have done that?” Carly asked.

“Yes.” Winifred looked straight at Dan. “Castillos and Sandovals have intermarried for three hundred years. Two of my father’s sisters married into the Sandoval family. One Sandoval in Mexico. Another in Colombia. They had no use for Yankee laws. Their sons and daughters and grandchildren feel the same. They remember a time when poppy and peyote, morning glory and cocoa leaf were legal, the medicines of the curanderos. They remember when they walked tall and Anglos were carpetbaggers.”

“That was a long time ago,” Dan said quietly.

“Not to those who lost. To them, it’s new and bitter. It always will be until the wrongs of the past are righted.”

“That will never happen,” Dan said. “The remembered wrongs will always be bigger than anything the present can offer as payment.”