The Ed Eagle Novels Read online

  The Ed Eagle Novels

  Short Straw

  Santa Fe Dead

  Santa Fe Edge

  Stuart Woods

  Short Straw

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  FICTION

  Dark Harbor+

  Iron Orchid*

  Two-Dollar Bill+

  The Prince of Beverly Hills

  Reckless Abandon+

  Capital Crimes†

  Dirty Work+

  Blood Orchid*

  The Short Forever+

  Orchid Blues*

  Cold Paradise+

  L.A. Dead+

  The Run†

  Worst Fears Realized+

  Orchid Beach*

  Swimming to Catalina+

  Dead in the Water+

  Dirt+

  Choke

  Imperfect Strangers

  Heat

  Dead Eyes

  L.A. Times

  Santa Fe Rules

  New York Dead+

  Palindrome

  Grass Roots†

  White Cargo

  Deep Lie†

  Under the Lake

  Run Before the Wind†

  Chiefs†

  TRAVEL

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

  MEMOIR

  Blue Water, Green Skipper

  Short Straw

  STUART WOODS

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK

  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 Penguin 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) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,

  Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) •

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017,

  India • Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • 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 © 2006 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.

  Short straw / Stuart Woods.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-21986-7

  Attorney and client––Fiction. 2. Santa Fe (N.M.)––Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.O642S57 2006 2006041643

  813’.54––dc22

  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.

  This book is for

  Bob Dattila and Betsy Hall.

  Short Straw

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  One

  ED EAGLE DIDN’T WANT TO GET OUT OF BED. USUALLY HE woke at the stroke of seven, put his feet on the floor and was up and running, but not this morning. He drifted for a moment, then snapped back. He raised his head and looked at the large digital clock that rested on top of the huge, flatscreen TV on his bedroom wall: 10:03 A.M. Impossible. Clock broken.

  He sat up and checked his wristwatch on the bedside table: 10:03. What the hell was going on? He had a hundred people coming to lunch at the grand opening of his new offices at noon, and there was much to do. Why hadn’t Barbara woken him? He stood up. “Barbara?” he yelled. Silence. He looked at the other side of the bed: still made up.

  He staggered into the bathroom and splashed water on his face, then he walked across the hall to his wife’s bathroom. Not there. On the marble shelf under the mirror was a small plastic bottle from the pharmacy, lid off. He picked it up and read the label. AMBIEN. Sleeping pill. He never took them. He looked inside: empty.

  He replayed the evening before: steaks for the two of them, grilled on the big Viking range, Caesar salad, bourbon before, bottle of red with. Half a bottle of red wine would not cause him to over-sleep. Not unless it contained an Ambien or two. He had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.

  He walked downstairs in his bare feet and checked every room, then he went to the garage. Barbara’s Range Rover was gone. Could she have gone to the office without him to get ready for the gathering, letting him sleep late? She must have.

  Ed went back upstairs, shaved and stood in a shower until he felt human again, then he blew dry his longish black hair, dressed in a new shirt, recently arrived from his shirtmaker in London, then a new suit, recently arrived from his tailor in the same city. He p
ulled on a pair of black alligator western boots, which added a couple of inches to his six-feet, seven-inch height—or altitude, as he liked to think of it—chose a tie and a silk pocket square, grabbed his Stetson and headed for town.

  He parked in his reserved space in the basement garage of the newly constructed, five-story office building, just off Santa Fe’s Plaza, then took the private elevator to the penthouse. His new offices were swarming with people: painters touching up here and there, janitors cleaning up after the painters, secretaries, caterers, people hanging pictures. Most of these things should have been done by the day before, but everything always ran a little late. He grabbed a passing secretary.

  “Where’s Barbara?” he asked.

  “Haven’t seen her,” the woman replied, then continued on her way.

  He walked across the open flagstone area just inside the glass doors and into his new office, tossing his Stetson onto a bentwood hat rack. A painter was daubing at a place on the wall next to the windows. He picked up the phone and pressed the Page button.

  “Barbara?” he said, hearing his voice echo across the whole floor.

  His secretary picked up the phone. “Ed? Barbara’s not here yet. I thought she would come with you.”

  “She left the house before I did, Betty, and I overslept.”

  “I didn’t know you slept at all,” she replied drily.

  “Not after seven A.M., I don’t.”

  “Tie one on last night?”

  “I tied on two ounces of bourbon and half a bottle of wine, and that’s all.”

  “She’ll turn up,” Betty said. “Excuse me, I’ve got things to do.” She hung up.

  Ed opened the French doors and walked out onto his newly planted, private terrace. He strolled over to the parapet and viewed the action in the plaza. Everything was as usual: the Indians selling their jewelry on the sidewalk in front of the Governor’s Palace, old folks taking the spring sun on the benches in the little park, shopkeepers sweeping their sidewalks. Santa Fe had been up for hours, but, like him, it was just waking. Ed went back inside and walked slowly around the offices, inspecting everything carefully. It was all finally coming together. He walked out onto the larger terrace. The caterers had set up a bar and a long lunch table, and they were hand-trucking in dishes, silverware and serving pieces.

  He went back to his office and sat down, not knowing what to do next. He was still fuzzy around the edges. Coffee, that’s what. He walked over to the built-in cabinets on one wall of his office and opened a pair of doors, revealing a little kitchenette. Betty had already made the coffee, and he poured himself a mug and took a Danish from the plate she had left there. Special occasion. He went back to his desk and stood by it, sipping his coffee.

  It was his fiftieth birthday. Moreover, with the opening of his new offices, this day was the culmination of everything he had worked for over the past twenty-five years. He had long been Santa Fe’s top trial attorney, but he had finally and firmly established himself as one of the half-dozen best trial lawyers west of the Mississippi, and that included Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When people were accused of bad things, they thought of Ed Eagle.

  One case had done more than any other to help him achieve that status: the Wolf Willett murders, a couple of years earlier. Wolf was a Hollywood producer, and three people had been murdered in his Santa Fe home: himself and his wife, Julia, among them, or so it had first seemed. Wolf had been astonished to learn of his own death when he had read about it, and he had come to Ed Eagle for help. Ed’s clearing of Wolf Willett had made headlines all over the country and had revealed the sordid background of Julia Willett. Ed was now married to Julia’s sister, and he believed he knew everything about her background.

  And where the hell was she? It was past eleven o’clock, and their guests were due at noon.

  Betty came into his office with a sheet of paper in her hand, closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “You’re going to want to sit down,” she said.

  “That sounds ominous,” he replied.

  “It was meant to. Sit down.”

  Ed obediently sat down.

  Betty took a deep breath, walked over to his desk and laid the sheet of paper on it. “I just found this in the fax machine,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner, but I’ve been busy.”

  Ed picked up the sheet of paper, which was a letter from his bank. He read aloud: “This is to confirm the wire transfer of $930,000 from your firm account and $170,000 from your personal account to…” He stopped reading aloud. “To an account in the Cayman Islands? What the hell is this?”

  “It sounds very much like all the cash you have,” Betty said. “Unless you’ve got something in your sock.”

  Ed bared his teeth. “Look in my mouth,” he said to Betty. “Do I still have my eyeteeth?”

  “Figuratively speaking,” Betty replied, “no.”

  Two

  EAGLE SET THE LETTER DOWN ON HIS DESK. HIS MIND, which had been slowed by the remnants of the sleeping pill, was suddenly operating under full steam. “Get me my broker,” he said to Betty.

  Betty picked up the phone on his desk, dialed the number and handed him the phone.

  “Jim?” Eagle said.

  “Morning, Ed. I expect you’re calling about the wire transfer.”

  “Yes, I am. Has it gone?”

  “I’ve just been handed the authorization. We liquidated your accounts yesterday, as per your fax. The wire will be gone in five minutes.”

  “Hold everything,” Eagle said.

  “What?”

  “Do not wire those funds.”

  “All right; what do you want me to do with all this cash? It’s just over four million dollars.”

  “Is it too late to cancel the sale of all those stocks?”

  “Well, yes; it was done yesterday. I know you wanted the funds wired before two P.M., but we couldn’t release that large a sum until we had confirmations.”

  “Jim, listen to me very carefully: the fax you got was not sent by me and did not reflect my wishes. Do you understand?”

  “It was signed by Barbara, Ed.”

  “I’m going to send you a letter confirming that the instructions were unauthorized, and I want you to call someone at the IRS immediately and inform them of that fact. Follow up with a letter, because otherwise, I’ll be faced with a hell of a tax bill for the capital gains on those sales.”

  “Of course, I will, Ed, and I want to apologize, but I thought….”

  “Don’t worry about it, Jim; we caught it in time, and I’m not going to hold your firm responsible for anything but the notification of the IRS. I’ll talk to you later. Oh, by the way, send me the paperwork immediately for removing Barbara’s name from all my accounts.”

  Eagle hung up and turned to Betty. “Call the credit card companies and cancel all Barbara’s credit cards, with immediate effect. I’ll talk to them, if necessary. Also, have them fax copies of all the charges in the last and current billing cycle.”

  “Got it,” Betty said and left the office.

  Eagle got up and went into the shiny new bathroom off his shiny new office and vomited what was left of last night’s dinner into the shiny new toilet. He drank a glass of water, then went back to his desk and called Russell Norris. Norris was a retired top IRS agent who now worked as a consultant. He was very good at dealing with foreign banks. He explained the situation to Norris, who promised to get back to him quickly.

  Eagle took a deep breath and called the president of his bank. “Fred?”

  “Yes, Ed. I was just about to leave for your shindig.”

  “Great. Before you do, I received a fax from you this morning, addressed to Barbara, confirming a transaction. I expect you are familiar with that.”

  “Of course, Ed, I handled it myself, yesterday.”

  “Listen to me carefully, Fred: I did not authorize the transaction; the instructions are fraudulent.”

  There was a silence at the
other end of the phone, and when the man spoke again, his voice was shaky. “Ed, tell me this is a joke.”

  “It is not a joke. The instructions were not mine, and the signature on the fax is not mine.”

  “I tried to call you to confirm it, but neither your old office or your new one answered. All I got was a message saying you were closed for moving.”

  “Fred, you need to report this to your board immediately.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I want those funds back in my account before the close of business today.”

  “Ed, I don’t know about that; I’ll have to talk to my board. Why did Barbara do this?”

  “I don’t know yet; I’m just beginning my investigation. I will follow up with written notification of the fraud, and I will expect you and your board to do the right thing. Come to think of it, you can hold your board meeting right here, since all the members are coming to our opening.”

  “Yes, I suppose we could, Ed. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Goodbye, Fred.”

  Betty came into the office with several sheets of paper. “Looks like Barbara has been shopping for a lot of new clothes,” she said, laying them on the desk. “About thirty thousand dollars’ worth, and some new luggage, too. Oh, and there’s a little item on her American Express card for twenty-two thousand dollars for the charter of a jet from a company in Albuquerque. I called them: they picked up a Mrs. Eagle at seven A.M. this morning at the Santa Fe airport and flew her to Mexico City. She landed an hour ago.”