QUINTRELL RANCH
LATE THURSDAY NIGHT
WINIFRED IGNORED THE SLUGGISHNESS OF HER BODY AND MIND, STRENGTH LOST to a drug, strength she couldn't afford to lose.
Who was it?
Who drugged us?
Why?
The questions battered her mind as much as illness battered her body.
Everybody could have. Once the doctor brought me into the room, my back was to the bottle holding the farewell toast. Or it could have been put in the empty cups.
Anyone. Anyone at all.
With a sharp movement of her head, she tossed back the stimulant she'd mixed for herself as soon as she'd understood what had happened. While the false strength hummed through her blood, she put away the old questions and asked another one.
Who couldn't have drugged us?
That was the person she would trust to mail the envelopes.
With steady rhythm and unsteady hands, she wheeled herself through the house's wide hallways to the Senator's office. She didn't see the paintings and sculpture, the expensive knickknacks from another time; she thought only about the members of the household, the people who had access to her herbs and those who didn't.
Nothing changed. It still could have been anyone. She would have to see to the copying and mailing herself.
She opened the door to the office and nudged her wheelchair through. Across the room, the old-fashioned clock ticked between photos of the Senator smiling into the camera, his eyes on the main chance and his hands ever ready to grab a female butt.
I should have killed him years ago.
But she hadn't. She'd been afraid of his son, a fear that proved wise.
She wheeled over to the desk. Everything she needed was there, from copier to computer to supplies. Melissa kept the office as if the Senator was still alive, still able to dictate letters and watch them typed. Outgoing material-bills and checks and orders for supplies-lay bundled on the polished wood tray at the edge of the old desk, just as mail always had at the ranch.
Winifred turned on the copier and went to work, reproducing the old document she'd taken from a locked box hidden in her room. When she was finished copying, she shut off the machine and turned to the desk. The wheelchair made reaching everything awkward, but she had no choice.
The side drawer stuck, then finally gave with a creak when she kept tugging. Deliberately she counted out three envelopes crisp with the Quintrell ranch logo and began addressing them. Into each envelope she put a copy of the old document. She hesitated, then put the receipt for the DNA samples that she'd sent into the envelope destined for Carolina May. She also put the original document in that envelope, folding the brittle paper ruthlessly.
With deliberate motions that belied the frantic beating of Winifred's heart, she sealed the envelopes and put stamps on each. Then she carefully mixed the three envelopes in with the ranch's normal outgoing mail, bundled everything up again, and set it neatly on the tray. Whoever took them in to town tomorrow morning-the Snead boys or Alma or Lucia-wouldn't notice the extra mail.
Winifred hesitated, but finally couldn't resist. She wanted the Senator's son to know. She wanted him to understand that she'd won.
Grimly she dialed the governor's cell number. The governor answered after four rings.
"What is it, Pete?" Josh asked. "More problems with the books?"
"It's not Pete," Winifred said. "But you have more problems than balancing the ranch books."
"Winifred? Is something wrong?"
"No, something's right." She coughed but managed to get her breath. "Finally it will be right."
"Look, it's late. I have a speech to edit, a plane to catch in four hours, and I'm still sick from whatever-"
"Oh, it's late all right," she interrupted. "Late for you and the Senator's plans. I fixed him, and you." She wanted to laugh but was afraid it would dissolve into coughing.
At the other end of the line, Josh pinched the bridge of his nose, shook himself like a dog coming out of water, and wondered what in hell was going on. Had the old woman finally cracked?
Just what I need right now-a certifiably nutty aunt.
"Winifred," he said curtly, "you're not making sense. Put Melissa on the line and-"
"Sylvia's great-grandmother, Isobel's mother, was una bruja," Winifred said, ignoring Josh's attempt to talk. "She knew the Senator couldn't be trusted with the land. She made him sign a document agreeing that-"
"Isobel? Isobel who?" Josh said impatiently. "What's this all about?"
"Castillo," Winifred hissed. "It's about the marriage between Castillo and Quintrell."
"That was a long time ago, long before the Senator was even born. How could anyone trust or not trust a man who wouldn't be born for forty years?"
Winifred took a shallow, careful breath. She had to focus so that the governor would understand.
So that he would know she'd won.
"They signed a marriage agreement," Winifred said. "Sylvia and the second Quintrell. One of the things they agreed was that only children with Sylvia Castillo's blood in them could inherit the land. Her children, not his."
"And your point would be?" Josh asked sarcastically. "Sylvia and the Senator had kids, and only one survived. That would be me. I inherited the ranch, and this whole conversation is nuts."
"Can you prove it?" Winifred asked, her voice hoarse and triumphant. "Can you prove Sylvia Castillo Quintrell is your mother?"
"Of course I-"
"No you can't," Winifred said, her voice trembling with victory and rage and illness. "You're no more a Castillo than I'm a Quintrell."
"You're crazy. Don't make me prove it and lock you up. You don't want to spend whatever time you have left wearing a hug-me jacket in a padded room. And that's just what will happen if you keep flogging this nonsense."
The governor hung up before Winifred could say another word.
You're crazy. Don't make me prove it and lock you up.
"You can threaten me and brush me off like a fly," Winifred said to the dead phone, "but not Jeanette Dykstra."
The thought made Winifred smile, then laugh, then cough until she was dizzy. Leaving the office was harder than entering had been. She was feeling age and sin and illness like a thousand cuts bleeding her strength away, even the raging strength of hatred. Death was coming to her in the body of a raven soaring on the wind. She didn't know when it would come, but she was certain it was soon.
If the pneumonia didn't kill her, the Senator's son would.