Elizabeth Lowell - Always Time To Die

There was barely enough room to swing a cat. Like the old adobe ranch house, this space had been made for people who were smaller than the norm today.

"Ms. May?"

Carly turned from her appraisal of the old building to find a much more modern creation. She took him in with the speed of someone who makes a living out of summarizing people. Mid-thirties, maybe forty. Easily six feet tall, probably more. Good shoulders beneath a turtleneck and leather jacket, long legs in a pair of worn-soft Levi's and scuffed hiking boots, dark hair, the face of a fallen angel, and green eyes that had seen hell. Whatever his history was, it hadn't been written in smiles.

"Mr. Salvador?" She walked toward him, smiling, her hand extended. "It's good of you to-"

"I'm Dan Duran," he cut in, shaking her hand briskly and releasing it the same way. "Gus is on the phone. Follow me."

She noticed a very slight unevenness in the first few steps he took. His left leg was stiff.

"Are you a reporter?" she asked, catching up and walking alongside him in the narrow hallway.

"No."

She waited a few moments, then ignored the man's lack of invitation to chat. "Rancher? Artist? Skier? Cop?"

"No."

"Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?"

He glanced sideways at her. Something close to amusement changed the line of his mouth beneath at least a day's worth of dark stubble. "Nope."

"Wow, a whole four letters in a single word," Carly said. "Careful. You're going to talk my arm off."

He glanced at the arm in question, and then at the woman, and wondered how someone with as much life and sass in her as Carolina May had chosen to make a career digging up graves. The thought of her with the gaunt, dour Miss Winifred made him shake his head.

"What?" Carly asked.

"Just imagining you with that old curandera."

"Who?"

"Miss Winifred. She makes potions and lotions for half of Taos County." She was also reputed to make spells and poisons, but Dan didn't see any need to talk about it with a nosy outsider; his mother was often mentioned in the same breath with Winifred. Locally, both women were curanderas of great respect.

"I didn't know Winifred was a healer," Carly said.

"I didn't say she was."

With that, Dan opened the door to Gus's office and gestured Carly in.

Frowning, she asked, "What does that mean?"

He ignored her.

Gus held up one finger.

"He'll be done in a minute," Dan said. Then he gestured toward the wall of framed first pages. "Enjoy."

He turned to leave.

Carly put her hand on his sleeve. "Wait," she said in a low voice, not wanting to disturb the editor of the Taos newspaper. "Have you known Miss Winifred long?"

"Yes."

"Were you raised here?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to interview you on the subject of-"

"No."

"Don't leave yet," Gus said, pointing at Dan.

When Dan shrugged and leaned against the wall, Gus spoke quickly into the phone. Then he hung up and stood, holding out his hand across the desk with a warm smile that was meant to balance his brother's chill.

"Ms. May, I'm Gus Salvador. Don't mind Dan. He lost his sense of humor somewhere in Afghanistan or Africa or Colombia, along with his manners."

Carly looked from Gus to Dan and back again. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Salvador."

"Gus."

She smiled. "Gus. Miss Winifred isn't feeling well today, so she sent me here to search through the morgue for clippings on the Quintrell and Castillo families. Is that all right?"

"Sure," Gus said.

"Are they computerized?" she asked.

Gus laughed. "Do we look computerized?"

"Urn, microfilm?"

"It's our standard archive method. Actually, a lot of the info is in searchable computer files, thanks to Dan. He made it a crusade, back when he was thirteen and a real computer geek."

She glanced warily at the man leaning against the wall. Although he appeared to be relaxed, she sensed he wasn't. What she didn't know was why.

Maybe he hates women.

"So, you're an archivist?" she asked Dan.

"No." He really didn't want to encourage the lithe young woman who was out stomping on everything in sight, looking for land mines.

"Yes, no, nope," she said. "You're the kind of interview that makes me want to kick something."

"Me, for instance?" Dan asked against his better judgment.

"Yeah." Then she smiled, pulled her scarf off her hair, and shook out a loose tumble of red-brown curls. "You spend words like hundred-dollar bills. Good thing you're not a Quintrell."

Gus started to say something. A look at his brother's face changed his mind.

"The newspaper archives are always available for research," Gus said after a moment. "Only rule is no smoking and no food or drink."

"I don't smoke and won't eat or drink in the archives."

Gus glanced at his watch. "I've got a paper to put together." He looked at Dan. "Take her to the archives and show her what she needs. You know more about it than anyone else."

Dan started to refuse, but didn't. Beneath his smile and warm manner, Gus was tired, overworked, and worried about his family.

"Right," Dan said. "You keep the key in the same place?"

"Lost the key." The phone rang. "Broke the lock." He reached for the phone. "Never fixed it. Yeah?" he said into the phone. "Mano? Did you get the perp walk?"

Carly waited until they were out in the hall to ask, "What's the-"

"Perp walk?" Dan cut in.

She nodded.

"That's the photo op that comes when the cop slaps cuffs on the presumed bad guy and marches him in front of the media," Dan said.

Carly digested that while they walked down the hallway, away from the reception area. The back of the building opened out onto a small, deserted, and neglected courtyard. Maybe in summer it served as a retreat for workers in the surrounding buildings, but right now it looked as inviting as a meat locker.

"Perp walk," she said. "Got it. Who was it?"

"Armando Sandoval, cockfighter and drug smuggler."

"Drugs? He'll be going away for a long time."

Dan shook his head. "He was busted for the cocks. He'll pay a fine and be home for dinner."

She closed her eyes against the wind lifting grit and snow from the courtyard. Her ankles and fingers stung from the cold. She yanked her scarf over her head and held it in place. "Does this happen all the time?"

"The wind?"

"No. The perp walk and the arrest and the fine."

Dan shrugged. "As often as it has to."

"What does that mean?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I need a lot of answers," she said. "It's what I do. Like a reporter, except that a lot of my subjects aren't alive to speak for themselves."

"So you suck up hearsay, rumor, gossip, and innuendo."

"You can go back to one-word answers anytime."

"Okay."

He grabbed the handle on a door that sat crookedly in its frame and gave it a yank. Frozen wood scraped over icy stone. She stepped past him quickly, eager to be out of the wind.

"Wait."

She stopped when she felt the strength of his fingers gripping her arm. "What?" she said.

"Bad footing."

Instead of the uneven wooden floor nearly all the old, single-story buildings had, this doorway opened abruptly onto a rickety cellar door set right in the floor. A tarp covered the door to keep in the heat of the room below. Dan flipped the tarp aside and turned on a switch.

Carly's eyes widened as she looked at the ancient door. The holes between the slats were big enough for her to step right through. Dan might not be the most outgoing man she'd ever met, but he'd kept her from a nasty fall.

"Used to be the town icehouse," he said, opening the cellar door. "During Prohibition it was the local speakeasy. Now it's the archive for the paper. They cut another entrance to the first floor around the corner, but this way is easier to get to the basement."