Free Santa Fe Dead by Stuart Woods Page A

already done so, Mr. Wells. I’m very, very sorry for your loss. When you feel up to it, you might give some thought to any arrangements you want to make. My office will assist you.”
    “Thank you,” Wells said softly, then hung up.
    Eagle looked up to see two police cars and a van pull into the drive. He stood up to greet them. Before he could speak to the first officer, the district attorney’s car drove in behind the other vehicles, and Bob Martínez got out.
    EAGLE TOOK THEM through the house, following his original path, then he went back to the front porch and sat down again. A few minutes passed, then Martínez and a Detective Reese joined him, pulling up chairs.
    “Take us through it from the first phone call,” the detective said.
    Eagle explained himself. “Right after I spoke to you, Bob, Wells called me on my cell phone. He checked with the hotel operator and learned that the kidnap threat call had come from this house. He said the voice was electronically altered and he was told to raise five million dollars. He was also told that if he called anybody, his wife and son would be killed. It occurs to me that, somehow, the perpetrators may have known that he made the call to me, and that’s why the murders took place. I didn’t mention this to him. I told him to stay in his suite and that the Santa Fe police would be in touch with him. I also told him to have his hotel make travel arrangements for him to come to Santa Fe.”
    “Please call him back, Mr. Eagle, and find out when he’s due here, then let me speak to him,” Detective Reese said.
    “We’d better call from inside the house, so we can each be on an extension,” Eagle said. “He’s retained me to represent him, and I have to be present for any questioning.”
    “There are two phones in the study,” Martínez said, “and we’ve already processed them and the one in the living room.”
    “Then let me speak to him first, and I’ll tell you when he’s ready to talk to you.”
    “All right,” the detective said. “We’ll wait in the living room.”
    Eagle went into the study, sat down at Wells’s desk and got connected with Wells. “Mr. Wells, have you made travel arrangements?”
    “Yes, I’ll fly to New York tomorrow morning, change for Dallas, then for Albuquerque. My plane gets in at seven tomorrow evening.” He gave Eagle the flight number.
    “I’ll have you met and brought to a hotel in Santa Fe.”
    “Can’t I stay in my own home?”
    “I’ll try, but I doubt it. The police have a lot of work to do here, and the master suite is not habitable at the moment.”
    “Is that where they were killed?”
    “Yes. The police want to speak with you now, but before I put them on the phone, I want you to think carefully: Is there anything you’ve failed to tell me that I might need to know?”
    Wells seemed to reflect. “No, I don’t think so.”
    “Mr. Wells, I must tell you that you will be the first suspect, until the police have been able to eliminate you as such.”
    “But how could I have anything to do with this? I’m in Rome!”
    “Of course you are, but they will suspect you anyway; it’s how they work, and you shouldn’t be upset by it. Now, tell me, what was the state of your marriage?”
    “We’ve been married for eight years,” Wells said. “We are . . . were both very content with things, I think.”
    “You say ‘content,’ instead of ‘happy.’”
    “We were settled in for the long haul,” Wells said.
    “You said your son was fourteen.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Then I take it, he was your stepson.”
    “Yes, but I loved the boy; it was no different than being his real father.”
    “I should contact the boy’s biological father. Can you give me his name and number?”
    “He’s dead. He was killed in a street robbery in New York.”
    “How long ago?”
    “About a year and a half before Donna and I were married, so between nine and ten years ago.”
    “Was the perpetrator