Santa Fe Dead 03 Read online

  Santa Fe Dead 03

  Woods, Stuart

  Penguin (2008)

  Rating: ★★★☆☆

  Tags: Divorced People, Mystery Detective, Santa Fe (N.M.), Political, Attorney and Client, Legal, General, Mystery Fiction, Fugitives From Justice, Legal Stories, Suspense Fiction, Fiction

  Divorced Peoplettt Mystery Detectivettt Santa Fe (N.M.)ttt Politicalttt Attorney and Clientttt Legalttt Generalttt Mystery Fictionttt Fugitives From Justicettt Legal Storiesttt Suspense Fictionttt Fictionttt

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  From Publishers Weekly

  Bestseller Woods's third thriller to feature prominent New Mexican attorney Ed Eagle (after Short Straw and Santa Fe Rules) opens with a bang, but soon devolves into a fairly predictable cat-and-mouse game. Ed and his girlfriend, actress Susannah Wilde, are watching the Los Angeles trial on Court TV of his villainous ex-wife, Barbara, who stands accused of arranging for his murder, when a reporter announces that Barbara has escaped from custody just before the not guilty verdict. Soon, suitably disguised and under an alias, Barbara contrives to meet a recent widower, Palo Alto billionaire Walter Keeler, at a luxury spa and has him proposing marriage and making a new will in her favor. Meanwhile, her hatred for her ex unquenched, Barbara schemes to have Ed and Susannah killed. Bodies, innocent and otherwise, pile up, but there's little suspense about the outcome, and an improbable coincidence involving the billionaire may strike some as a plot weakness. Author tour. (Apr.)

  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  Review

  Praise For Stuart Wood’s Short Straw

  “Woods keeps [his characters] moving smartly around the playing board like so many checkers . . . .”

  —_Kirkus Reviews_ (starred review)

  “A taut tale of a very bad woman out to fleece a very good man. . . . Scarcely an excess word gets in the way of the briskly moving plot.”

  —_Publishers Weekly_

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  FICTION

  TRAVEL

  A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (1979)

  MEMOIR

  Blue Water, Green Skipper (1977)

  *A Holly Barker Novel †A Stone Barrington Novel

  ‡A Will Lee Novel §An Ed Eagle Novel

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland,

  25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2008 by Stuart Woods

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not

  participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Woods, Stuart.

  Santa Fe dead / Stuart Woods.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3483-3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Leslie Alexander.

  1

  ED EAGLE SAT, all six feet seven inches of him, propped up on many pillows in bed, watching Court TV on the fifty-inch flatscreen television of his suite at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. He had decided to watch from bed rather than attend the trial of his former wife, Barbara, since he had already spent three days in the courtroom, giving his testimony against her. Now it was time for the summations.

  The prosecutor, a woman apparently in her midthirties named Valerie Simmons, whom Eagle found quite attractive, had done a very good job in the trial, he thought, and since he was one of the half dozen best trial lawyers in the western United States, his opinion counted for something. Now all Ms. Simmons had to do was nail the lid on the thing. Eagle would have preferred nailing and screwing the lid on it, but he would settle for nailing—anything to get Barbara into a cell for the next fifty years or so.

  Eagle’s girlfriend of the last year, the actress Susannah Wilde, came out of the bathroom, her hair wet, her robe hanging open. She crawled across his body, deliberately stroking his face with her breasts as she went, and snuggled up next to him.

  “Don’t wave th
ose things at me,” Eagle said. “I have to watch Barbara go down.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather watch me go down?” Susannah asked, tickling his lower belly.

  “On another occasion, yes,” he replied. “But right now you’re going to have to contain yourself, as difficult as that may be.”

  Susannah sighed and pulled herself upright next to him, plumping her pillows. “Oh, all right,” she said.

  Valerie Simmons rose and walked toward the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said to them, “I want to thank you for your attention to what has been a lengthy trial. Now, I want to summarize the evidence against Barbara Eagle, as succinctly as I can, and I would remind you that everything I am about to say has been testified to by witnesses. You have heard from Ms. Eagle’s former husband, Ed Eagle, how he first met Ms. Eagle when she was serving a prison sentence in New York for armed robbery and as an accessory to the killing of her first husband during that robbery. You have heard how she was released on parole and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she renewed her acquaintance with Mr. Eagle, and how they came to be married a year or so later.

  “You have heard how Mr. Eagle woke up one morning, having been drugged with the sleeping pill Ambien in his wine the night before, and found his wife gone, and how she had taken more than a million dollars of his money from his bank accounts and attempted to take five million more from his brokerage accounts, something he managed to forestall.

  “You have heard how Mr. Eagle hired two private investigators to find his wife in Mexico, where she had fled, and how she shot one of the investigators and pushed the other overboard from a ferry in the Sea of Cortez. Both were lucky to survive. You have heard how she hired two men from Santa Fe to murder Mr. Eagle and how one of them nearly succeeded.

  “You have heard how she came back to the United States and checked into a resort in San Diego, where she had her appearance altered by having her dark hair dyed blond and with cosmetic surgery. You have heard how she then traveled to Los Angeles and contacted a friend, Mr. James Long, and how they had dinner together that evening at the Hotel Bel-Air. You have heard that Mr. Eagle and a friend were also dining there and how he did not recognize Ms. Eagle, because of her altered appearance.

  “You have heard how Ms. Eagle, later that night, drugged her companion, Mr. Long, once again with Ambien, left his home, returned to the Hotel Bel-Air and sought out the suite of Mr. Eagle. You have heard how she entered the suite next door, in error, and shot Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Dattila of New York, believing that they were Mr. Eagle and his friend.

  “All of this is in evidence, and the weight of it is enough for you to send Ms. Eagle to prison for the rest of her life. I ask you to do just that. Thank you.” Valerie Simmons sat down.

  The judge turned to the defense table. “Mr. Karp?” he said.

  Richard Karp rose and faced the jury. “Good morning,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, this case is about reasonable doubt. If you believe that there is a reasonable doubt that Barbara Eagle killed Mr. and Mrs. Dattila—and that is all that she is charged with—then you are legally and morally bound to acquit her. Everything you have heard from the prosecution about Ms. Eagle’s past and what she may or may not have done in Mexico is window dressing, nothing more, and none of what you have heard is supported by any material evidence, just the testimony of questionable witnesses.

  “While you heard Mr. Eagle testify that he was drugged with Ambien, there is no scientific evidence to support that contention. What happened was that Mr. Eagle had too much to drink the evening before and overslept. The funds that Ms. Eagle took with her to Mexico, in a desperate attempt to remove herself from an abusive marriage, were marital funds, and she was legally entitled to take them. I would remind you that one of the two men allegedly hired to kill Mr. Eagle is dead, and the other could not pick Ms. Eagle out of a lineup.

  “I would remind you that it is not a crime in the United States to shoot someone in Mexico in self-defense or to push someone off a boat in an attempt to defend herself from a rape, and you have heard that both of her attackers survived. I would remind you that, although Ms. Eagle and Mr. Long dined at the Bel-Air the evening before the murder, you have also heard, from Mr. Long, that she spent the entire night in his bed in his home and did not return to the Bel-Air to shoot Mr. Dattila, who, you have heard, was the son of the Mafia kingpin Carmine Dattila, who also met a violent death. It is far more likely that Thomas Dattila was killed by his own associates or competitors than by Ms. Eagle.

  “I would remind you that Mr. James Long underwent no testing for the drug Ambien, and he has testified that Ms. Eagle spent the night with him—indeed, that they made love in the middle of the night. I would remind you that it is not a crime for a woman to have her appearance enhanced by her hairstylist and her cosmetic surgeon.” He smiled knowingly.

  “In fact, stripped to its relevant essentials, the prosecution’s case is nothing more than a lot of hot air, backed only by the testimony of an angry ex-husband and the two private detectives he hired to bully and harass her and to come into this court and lie about her. There is no physical evidence, no murder weapon and no motive for the murders of two people Ms. Eagle had never even met.

  “I put it to you that the doubt of guilt in this case is not only reasonable but overwhelming, and I ask you, after a careful examination of the evidence—or, rather, nonevidence—to acquit Barbara Eagle and set her free, so that she may still have a chance to find some happiness in what has, so far, been a life full of abuse and harassment by her ex-husband and others. Find her not guilty.” Karp sat down.

  “What did you think?” Susannah asked.

  “Well, they both said pretty much what I would have said, if I had been prosecuting or defending,” Eagle said. “I think the jury will convict her.”

  “Well, then,” Susannah said, “while the jury is deliberating, may I distract you?”

  “You may,” Eagle said, rolling over and taking her in his arms.

  SHE HAD BEEN distracting him for ten minutes or so, when Eagle was redistracted by a sudden intensity in the voice of the Court channel’s anchor.

  “We’re just getting word,” the anchor said, “that something has happened outside the courtroom where the trial of Barbara Eagle has just ended. Let’s go to our reporter on the scene for the details.”

  A beautiful young woman in a red suit and with perfect hair came on-screen. “Well,” she said, breathlessly, “it seems that Barbara Eagle has disappeared from the conference room where she and her lawyer were awaiting a verdict. Apparently, while Mr. Karp had excused himself to go to the men’s room, Ms. Eagle somehow got out of the conference room, in spite of a guard on the door, and maybe even out of the building. A search is being conducted for her now.”

  “Ed,” Susannah said, “you’ve gone all limp.”

  2

  BARBARA EAGLE SAT at the table in a conference room near the courtroom where she had just been tried, awaiting the jury’s verdict. She had had lunch in this room every day during her trial, so she knew that it was on the first floor and overlooked the rear parking lot of the courthouse, reserved for judges. She knew, also, that the windows would open only ten or twelve inches, and only from the top.

  She had been keeping her lawyer’s water glass full for two hours, and she was waiting for results. Finally, he excused himself and went into the adjoining toilet. Barbara moved quickly. She climbed onto the windowsill, stuffed her shoes, handbag and jacket through the top opening of the window, then grabbed the bottom of the opening on the extreme left and swung her right, stockinged foot up until she could hook a toe over the edge of the window. From this point, it was all muscle, and she had had nearly a year in jail to work out. She lifted herself until she could get a knee over the edge, then continued until all that was left of her inside the room was her head, one leg and her ass. She turned to the left, and got her head out the window. From there she wriggled her ass through the window—the dieting had helped—then al
l she had to do was bring her leg outside after her.

  She dangled from the window and took a quick look around the parking lot: a man got out of a car and went into the building through a rear door, but he wasn’t looking up, and the parking lot was screened from the street by a high hedge. Once he was inside she dropped to the ground, a distance of some seven or eight feet, landed on the soft earth of a flower bed, behind some azalea bushes, and toppled over. She got up, brushed herself off, put on her shoes, grabbed her handbag and walked quickly across the parking lot to the row of ficus trees that had begun to grow together.

  She pressed between them, then stopped halfway through to get a look at the street. The Toyota was parked where it was supposed to be, and Jimmy Long was at the wheel. There were no police cars or cops in sight, so she stepped out of the hedge, crossed the sidewalk, opened the rear door of the car and got in. “Hey, Jimmy,” she said.

  “Hey, sweetie, we okay?”

  “Yep. Let’s roll.” Barbara lay low on the backseat, and the car started to move.

  “Where to?”

  “The nearest place you can get a taxi.”

  “There’s a hotel a few blocks down.”

  “That’s good.” Her luggage was sitting on the rear seat and floor, and Barbara rummaged in a bag and came out with an auburn wig and a green jacket. She tucked her hair, which was already pinned up, under the wig, sat up and checked herself out in the rearview mirror, then she got into the green jacket and stuffed her beige one into the bag. “Okay, brief me.”

  “The car belonged to my housekeeper’s sister, who has a last name different from hers. I bought it and registered it in your new name, Eleanor Wright. I went to see the photographer you sent me to in Venice, and he was able to change the hair color on the last photos he took of you and make you the same package of documents he did for you before—passport, driver’s license, credit cards, Social Security—all with my address on them. Ms. Wright used to rent my garage apartment, but she left a couple of months ago, if anybody asks. Everything is in a paper bag on the front passenger seat.