Always Time To Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

is she today?”
    “Same as every day.”
    Right, Carly told herself. For now, I’ll shelve the topic of Sylvia Quintrell.
    Winifred shifted the recliner lever so that the chair supported her legs. The soles of her sturdy shoes were scuffed and worn. Her skin was pale beneath its normal olive color. She looked exhausted and determined in equal measure. Breathing seemed to be an effort.
    “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, depending 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 María Velásquez y Oñate 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 Oñate.”
    Carly wondered if the older woman knew that “de los Dios” most often meant a bastard child. De Jesús was another popular name for the fatherless. The custom came from centuries earlier when