Free Santa Fe Rules by Stuart Woods

and a stack of other newspapers. He looked up. “Morning,” he said. “You feeling better?”
    “Rested,” Wolf replied.
    “I hope you didn’t mind staying over, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to your house just yet.”
    “I understand. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to sleep somewhere in Santa Fe. I didn’t want to expose Mark Shea, and I couldn’t have gone to a hotel.”
    “Exactly.” An Indian woman came into the room and waited expectantly. “How about some breakfast?” Eagle asked. “Anything you’d like.”

    “Bacon and eggs, orange juice, toast, and coffee, please.”
    Eagle nodded at the woman, and she disappeared into the kitchen. When the eggs came, Eagle put down his newspaper. “Eat hearty,” he said. “At nine o’clock we find out whether you’re going to be arrested.”
    “How do we do that?”
    “We visit the district attorney.”
    Wolf had trouble swallowing the first bite of his breakfast.
    “Something I need to ask you,” Eagle said. “Didn’t think of it last night, and I don’t want you to be offended.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Did you and your wife ever go to bed with anybody else? Together, I mean.”
    Wolf nodded. “We had a couple of threesomes. Julia always arranged it.”
    “With another man or another woman?”
    “Always with another woman, although I think Julia was angling for two men.”
    “How did you feel about that idea?”
    “Uncomfortable.”
    “Would it have made you wildly jealous?”
    “I’m not a jealous person.”
    Eagle nodded. “So you wouldn’t have exploded on finding Julia in bed with Jack?”
    “I don’t explode much. Anyway, I think that if I had found Julia and Jack and this other guy, whoever he was, in bed together, I would have thought it was bad manners on Julia’s part, but I wouldn’t have reacted by using a shotgun on the three of them.” He managed a short laugh. “Certainly not one of my Purdeys.”
    Eagle laughed, too. “I appreciate your delicacy; I hope the D.A. will, as well. One more thing, and I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

    “Shoot.”
    “On the occasion of your pair of threesomes, were the third partners different?”
    “No, it was the same woman both times.”
    “Who was she?”
    “Her name is Monica Collins.”
    “That rings a bell, but I can’t place her,” Eagle said.
    “She lives in Santa Fe; divorced from a big-time independent movie producer named Franklin J. Collins.”
    “I’ve got her now: blond, fortyish, Beverly Hills dental work.”
    “That’s Monica.”
    “Tell me about her.”
    “We knew them a little as a couple in L.A., had dinner once at their house. It was shortly after that when the divorce happened. Story was, Monica got their Santa Fe house and a few million—opinions vary on that—and Frank got the L.A. property and the debts.”
    “And how did your…encounter with Ms. Collins occur?”
    “Julia invited her to dinner; the two of them cooked. We had a good deal to drink, ended up in the hot tub. One thing led to another.”
    “Who did the leading?”
    “At the time, I think I’d had enough to drink to believe I was just irresistible to both of them. But with hindsight, Julia.”
    “Did you continue this out of the hot tub?”
    “We moved to a bed.”
    “Which bedroom?”
    “One in the guest wing; the one where…”
    “I see. And who chose that room?”
    “Julia. She said something about the sheets not being fresh in our bedroom.”
    “What about the second encounter?”
    “It was pretty much like the first, except on that occasion, I think everybody knew ahead of time where the evening was heading.”
    “Have you seen Monica Collins since then?”
    “A couple of times, at other people’s houses.”
    “What sort of terms are you on with her?”
    “Good, I think; she was always cordial, seemed glad to see me, as well as Julia.”
    “Did she ever make any reference to your earlier encounters?”
    “No, but then she