Read St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die for Free Online

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 Oñate 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
6
    DAN SHUT THE WEATHERED DOOR OF THE TAOS MORNING 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 Señor Baubien and Señor Miranda of Taos. Soon afterward, Lucien Maxwell married Baubien’s daughter and set the stage for the Lincoln County War. Kit Carson and Lucien Maxwell, both of Taos, scouted for John Frémont in the 1840s. The Mexican-American War flared in 1846. The Civil War rated a passing mention because it kept the newly created Territory 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 County 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 County hero of an unpopular war.
    Other important local news was the big bridge over the Rio Grande gorge outside of town, which