Always Time To Die (13 page)

“You don’t ever need to call your chili second-best,” she said, leaning back with a satisfied sigh.

“Is this where I tell you Mom gave me the recipe?”

“That’s what I figured.” Carly sipped a little more beer. “When did you figure out that the Senator’s daughter was your grandmother?”

His eyelids lowered slightly. “I always knew. Just like everyone else in the town.”

“Including the Sandovals who jumped you?”

Dan shrugged.

“Does Winifred know?” Carly asked.

“She never said anything one way or the other.”

“Did you ask?”

“No.”

“Why not? You obviously like her.”

Dan spun the clear beer bottle between his hands. “I didn’t care. I still don’t.”

“She’s your blood relative.”

“We’re hardly close enough to be shirttail cousins.”

“But—”

He kept on talking. “Winifred’s sister’s legally disowned daughter is my mother’s mother,” he said sardonically. “Yippee-do. Talk about a close relative. I’ll have to be sure and turn up at the family barbecue.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“Which one?”

“Is John related to the Quintrells or the Castillos?”

“No. He’s from Idaho.”

“Right.” Carly glanced at Dan. He looked bored and irritated in equal parts, but at least he was answering her questions. “Who is your maternal grandfather?”

“I don’t know. My grandmother never married anyone.”

“What about on your mother’s birth certificate? Who was listed as father?”

“No one.”

Carly drank a swallow of beer. “What does local gossip say?”

Dan’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “That she was a junkie and a slut who started screwing around at thirteen and got knocked up when she was fifteen.”

Carly winced but kept on asking questions. She told herself that she needed to know about the people of the area before she could do justice to Winifred’s family history. And she knew she was lying to herself. Sure, local history would be helpful, but it was a need to know Dan’s personal history that was driving her.

“No particular boyfriend?” she asked.

“Three of the Sandoval brothers. If you believe what the boys yelled at me before they jumped me, she liked more than one at a time. Or maybe she was too whacked out to care how many climbed on.”

Carly swallowed hard. “Why would young boys know about something that happened to your grandmother?”

“The smaller the town, the longer the memory.” When Carly started to ask another question, Dan cut her off. “My turn. Tell me about your parents.”

She looked at the line of foam sliding down the inside of the beer bottle. When people asked about her family, she usually said something meaningless and changed the subject. But she couldn’t. Not now. Dan wasn’t just anyone, and he hadn’t liked talking about his family any more than she was eager to talk about her lack of family. If she was going to see where their mutual attraction led, she’d have to do some sharing of her own.

“I don’t know anything about my biological parents,” she said after a moment. “The couple who adopted me, Glenn and Martha May, were fifty-five and forty-eight when I came into their lives.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed again. “How old were you?”

“I think I was taken immediately from my birth mother. My parents never said.”

“And you never asked?”

“Oh, I asked. They said it didn’t matter, I was way too young to know what was going on at the time, my home was with them, they loved me.” She shrugged. “The usual things adopted children hear when the adoptive parents don’t want to talk about it.”

“Was it a formal adoption, through a licensed agency?”

“No. That’s why the records stayed sealed even after I turned twenty-one.”

Dan nodded. From what he’d seen of Carly, she wouldn’t have taken her parents’ reluctance about details as the final word. She would have pursued it on her own. And she had.

“Blank wall?” he asked.

“Completely.” She grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong. My curiosity about my biological parents wasn’t a slam at Martha and Glenn. They loved me as much as any parents could.”

“How about you? Did you love them?”

Carly looked surprised. “Of course. They were kind, careful to introduce me to a wide range of experiences, and committed to my education. As I got older, they taught me about the genealogies that were their life’s work.”

“But it was the past that compelled them, not the present or the future.”

“You’re quick. It took me years to figure that out. They were fascinated by ancestors, by the past. Both Glenn and Martha taught at the university—European history and Latin. They were a well-matched couple.”

Dan thought about a much younger Carly, bright and curious and energetic, raised by a couple old enough to be her grandparents, people whose life work was the past. “Any siblings?”

“No.” She smiled wryly. “I think I was enough of a handful. They didn’t need more.”

He clicked the beer bottle lightly against his chili bowl. “Did they ever say why they adopted you? Had they always wanted kids?”

“They never said, but…” Carly sure had wondered more than once. She ripped off a bit of tortilla and nibbled. “Martha was the last of her family in the U.S., an only child raised by only children. It was the same for Glenn. No siblings, no aunts or uncles, no cousins closer than fourth or fifth. Nothing but a genealogy narrowing down to one name.”

“Onlys raising onlys.”

She nodded. “It was one of the many things they had in common. But Glenn and Martha couldn’t have even one child. So one day they got me, and here we are.”

“Were they pleased that you loved the past as much as they did?”

Carly nibbled some more. She wasn’t hungry. She just needed something to do with her hands besides twist a strand of hair around her finger. “I think so. We never talked about it in those terms.”

“So what did you talk about, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire?”

She laughed. “We talked about genealogical sources, how to trace female ancestors versus male ancestors, history at the time of their grandparents and the seventh generation in the past. That sort of thing.” She leaned toward him eagerly. “I loved that part the best, figuring out what people wore and ate in fifteenth-century England or Italy or Spain. I loved thinking about the consequences to ordinary people of the violent infusions of Viking and Dane blood and culture into a local population, of the Crusades, of the plagues and famines, of the adventurers and colonists and the ones who stayed home, of how the new generations of a family changed and forgot each other, of how much fun it is to find an American’s fourth cousin in County Clare, then listen to them when they finally get together and share family photos and memories that bridge time and the ocean.”

“Connection,” he said.

“Exactly. So many people take it for granted or don’t even care that they’re an entry on a much larger genealogical chart,” she said, spreading her arms, “a chart that could span centuries and countries and weave together the whole of—” She stopped abruptly as her right hand smacked against the wall and sent a piece of tortilla flying.

Dan captured her left hand before it collided with his nose. He laced his fingers through hers and held her hand against his thigh. Safer that way. Felt good, too.

“Sorry,” she said, flushing as she bent to pick up the piece of tortilla with her free hand. “I get a little carried away when I talk about my work.”

“I like your enthusiasm.” He had felt the same way about his work. Once. When he’d quit the State Department and joined St. Kilda Consulting’s affiliation of loose cannons, he’d been enthusiastic again. Then the
narcotraficantes
who wanted him dead had opened fire in a crowd. Three schoolchildren and a nun had died. He’d survived. He wondered if God was happy with the body count. Dan sure wasn’t. “How did Winifred find you?”

“She always has the TV on in the background when she’s with Sylvia. One of the yak-yak shows was interviewing me about a family history I’d just published. She was curious enough to call the show. I sent her a clipping from a recent newspaper article, along with the book I’d published for the family I’d just finished working with.”

“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

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.