Elizabeth Lowell: Always Time To Die

"We could do this tomorrow," Carly said. "The funeral must have tired you."

Winifred waved a gaunt hand, dismissing the younger woman's concern. "I'm fine."

Carly twisted the microphone pickup so that the tiny head was pointed toward Winifred. The sound quality would be uneven, de-pending on who was speaking, but she was used to that. She opened her laptop, called up the Quintrell file, and prepared to type as needed.

"You're aware that my recorder is on?" she asked.

"You told me that whenever I saw you I should assume I'm being recorded," Winifred said. "I have a good memory, Miss May. I don't need any fancy gadgets to tell me what I heard a few hours ago."

Neither did Carly, but the recordings sure saved arguments over who said what and when.

"I envy your memory," Carly said, checking that the computer was ready to go. She had a digital camera, too, but didn't want to start taking pictures until everyone was more at ease with her.

"Where do you want to start?" Winifred asked.

"That depends on what you want to accomplish. How far do you want to trace the Quintrell history-"

"I don't give a tinker's damn about Quintrell history," Winifred cut in. "It's Sylvia's and my history I want preserved. We go back a lot farther than the Quintrells. I traced us back all the way to Ferdinand the Great."

"Fascinating," Carly said, trying not to sigh. Most connections to distant, famous ancestors were wishful thinking. Modern descendants weren't happy to hear that their illustrious family tree existed only in some dead grandparent's mind. "Do you have documentation?"

"My mother got it from her mother, who got it from her father's sister, who was told by her mother."

"I see. Anecdotal evidence is always a lively part of any family history," Carly said carefully. "Physical evidence, such as land grants, marriage and birth registers, military records, church-"

"I have them, too," Winifred interrupted curtly. The hand wearing the turquoise ring waved in the direction of a huge antique desk. "All the way back to the seventeenth century."

Wonderful , Carly thought with no enthusiasm at all. That leaves a gap of six hundred years before we get to the eleventh century and Ferdinand the Great .

Carly typed quickly on her laptop computer. "I'm eager to go through those papers, but I'm unclear as to what you want me to do.

How far back in time do you want my narrative of your ancestors' lives to go?"

Something unpleasant flared in Winifred's black eyes. It was in her voice, too, rough and nearly savage.

Computer keys clicked softly as Carly's flying fingers took note of the dark emotion.

"The original land grant was given to the husband of Ignacia Isabel Maria Velasquez y Onate before the Reconquista," Winifred said.

Carly flipped through her memory of early Spanish history in the area that became New Mexico, and pulled out the date. "Late in the seventeenth century."

"My ancestors held land in Taos before the Indians rebelled."

"That's what makes this so exciting for me." Carly leaned forward with an eagerness she couldn't hide. "I love working with a family line that has roots deep in a state's history. Do you know the name of the original holder of the ancestral land grant?"

"Juan de los Dios Onate."

Carly wondered if the older woman knew that "de los Dios" most often meant a bastard child. De Jesus was another popular name for the fatherless. The custom came from centuries earlier when marriage was expected only of noblemen, but conception came to all classes of women. The luckiest of the noble bastards found favor with their aristocratic fathers. Apparently Juan de los Dios Onate had been one of the lucky ones. Land grants hadn't been handed out to people who didn't have influence with the Spanish court.

"Do you-" began Carly.

A sharp gesture from Winifred cut off the words. She leaned toward the bed, staring intently. Sylvia's head turned slowly toward the room. Her dark eyes were open, and as vacant as the wind.

"What is it, querida? ” Winifred said gently to her sister. "Did you hear the new voice? This is Miss Carolina May. She has come to write our family history. All of it." Winifred's smile was as predatory as her voice was soothing. "There will be justice, dear sister. On the grave of our mother the curandera, I promise this."

TAOS

MONDAY MORNING

DAN SHUT THE WEATHERED DOOR OF THE TAOSMORNING RECORD BEHIND HIM. HE nodded to the receptionist-secretary whose improbable red hair defied the lines in her face. She'd worked for the Record longer than Dan had been alive and her hair color never changed.

"Those better not be doughnuts," she said, sniffing the air hopefully. "My doctor told me to watch the sugar."

"I never touch doughnuts," Dan lied, heading for the editor's door.

"Huh. There's powdered sugar on your lips."

"Oops. Snow. That's it-snow."

Smiling, shaking her head, the woman went back to typing.

Dan walked down the hallway. The uneven floor was the legacy of centuries of use and the random settling of the earth beneath the building. The door to the editor's office was ajar for the simple reason that the doorframe itself was warped.

Gus looked up. As usual, there was a telephone pressed to his ear. He held up two fingers.

Two minutes.

Dan set the box of doughnuts on the desk, poured himself a mug of the black sludge Gus called coffee, and looked over the framed front pages in the editor's office. Except for those chronicling the Senator's career, and that of his son the governor, most of the biggest headlines were more than a century old. In Taos, not much in the way of banner headlines happened from year to year.

The printing presses had arrived in the 1830s, and the Spanish newspaper that ultimately became known as the Taos Morning Record began. The Mexican governor made large land grants in 1842, with the major benefactors being Senor Baubien and Senor Miranda of Taos. Soon afterward, Lucien Maxwell married Baubien's daughter and set the stage for the Lincoln TypeCounty War. Kit Carson and Lucien Maxwell, both of Taos, scouted for John Fremont in the 1840s. The Mexican-American War flared in 1846. The Civil War rated a passing mention because it kept the newly created TypeTerritory of New Mexico from becoming a state. Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett played out their violent destinies in the 1880s. Statehood in 1912 rated a headline as big as the paper.

After that, very little that was both local and newsworthy happened until the 1960s, when a ski resort was opened, the Senator's oldest son was killed in Vietnam and his other son injured, the hippies invaded Taos County, and a triple murderer was caught with a bloody knife. The fact that one of the women murdered was the Senator's wild-child daughter-a clinically designated pathological liar and a famous druggie-was discreetly mentioned, but not emphasized. Just one of three female bodies.

Much more ink was given to the Senator's grief over the death of his oldest son and his dedication to discovering and celebrating the service history of every Taos TypeCounty veteran of the Vietnam War. Instead of lobbying for a memorial just for his son, the Senator dug into his own pocket and commissioned a statue listing the names of each Taos TypeCounty hero of an unpopular war.

Other important local news was the big bridge over the Rio Grande gorge outside of town, which saved the locals a long detour and increased tourism greatly. The most recent excitement was years ago, in 1998, the four hundredth birthday party of New Mexico, historic land of many nations.

Is this why I came back ? Dan wondered. To read about how men and women from a rural county had to go halfway around the world to die ?