Stuart Woods: Santa Fe Edge

“What did you do with yourself today?” Charles asked.

“I built an escape hatch from my life,” she replied.

He looked at her oddly but did not question her further.

The following day they were married. Then the Gulfstream flew them back to San Jose.

Tip Hanks stood in front of the cameras and received his silver cup and a dummy check for nine hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. The amount would automatically be wired to his account.

During the past few days he had set a course record and won the tournament by four strokes. He gave an interview to a television journalist, then returned to the clubhouse, showered and changed, and gave another, longer interview to a woman from The Golf Channel.

That night he had a steak dinner, watched TV, then turned in early. He slept late the following morning, and it was noon before he got to the airport. He drove up to his Santa Fe home at four thirty that afternoon, noticing that Dolly’s car was not parked out front. She must be running an errand, he thought.

He walked into his home, unpacked his clothes, put the dirty things into a laundry hamper, then walked to his study next door. The room seemed oddly messy. He looked into Dolly’s office and found drawers pulled out and papers scattered around the room. His first thought was a burglary, and he went back into his study to phone the police, but he found a pink message slip stuck to the phone.

Bye-bye, sweetie. It’s been fun.

He was still puzzling over that when the phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hello?”

“Tip, it’s George Herron.” Herron was his accountant.

“Hello, George. Did you see I won the tournament yesterday?”

“Yes, I did, and congratulations. I’m afraid I have some troubling news, though.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I looked through your accounts online today for some tax information, and I saw that your prize money had been wired into your account this morning.”

“That is as it should be, George.”

“The problem was that it was wired out of your account only a few minutes later to an account in Singapore, as were another seven hundred thousand dollars from a bond fund in your brokerage account. Do you have a bank account in Singapore, Tip? Because if you do we haven’t been reporting that to the IRS, as the law requires.”

“No, George, I don’t have an account in Singapore, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who else is a signatory on your accounts?”

“Well, my assistant, Dolly…” Tip stopped and looked at the pink message slip. “Oh, shit,” he said.

CUPIE ANSWERED THE TELEPHONE.

“Cupie, it’s Dave Santiago.”

“Hey, Dave. How are you?”

“Not so good.”

“Did you pick up Barbara?”

“No, I didn’t. The D.A. wouldn’t sign the warrant. Not enough evidence and too much money.”

Cupie’s face dropped. “I saw the newspaper piece. He was scared off by the money?”

“Of course, he was,” Santiago replied. “Think about it. If you were the D.A. would you issue a warrant on a woman with that much money, without a murder weapon or physical evidence? You’d be looking at another O.J. trial against the best lawyers in the country. It would cost the county millions.”

“I see your point,” Cupie said. “Thanks for trying, Dave.”

He hung up and turned to Vittorio.

“No warrant, huh?” Vittorio asked.

“No warrant.”

“I guess you’ll be going back to L.A., huh, Cupie?”

“I guess,” Cupie replied woodenly.

“It doesn’t have to be over,” Vittorio said. “She’ll do something outrageous again, and maybe we’ll be in on the takedown.”

“Yeah,” Cupie said, brightening. “She’ll do that, and we’ll do that.”

Todd Bacon landed at the Manassas, Virginia, airport on Sunday night and left the keys to the Bonanza at the FBO desk for pickup by the Agency the following day. He checked into a nearby hotel for the night. Then, the following morning, he was at the Langley headquarters by eight thirty. He killed a little time in the lobby, then checked in with security and took the elevator up to the executive floor.

HOLLY WALKED into Lance Cabot’s office.

“What do you hear from our man in Santa Fe?” Lance asked.

“He’s our man in Sedona now,” Holly replied. “I had an e-mail from him.”

“Why Sedona?”

“He didn’t say. I suppose he had some trail to follow.”

There was a knock on the open door, and both Holly and Lance looked that way. Todd Bacon stood in the doorway.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m reporting as ordered.”

Lance stared at him, uncomprehending. “Reporting for what ?”

“As ordered,” Todd said. “For reassignment.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and approached Lance’s desk.

Holly took the paper from him and read it, then handed it to Lance. “Something you want to tell me, Lance?”

Lance read the e-mail, and his face fell.

“That’s the e-mail you sent me,” Todd said.

“Oh, my God,” Holly said.

“I thought you were in Sedona,” Lance said.

“Well, I was going there, but then I got your message. It was in my Agency mailbox.”

Lance had turned quite red. “Have you got any vacation time coming?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ve got two weeks,” Todd replied.

“Take it,” Lance replied. “Go. Report for reassignment when you get back.”

Todd looked at Holly questioningly.

Holly made a shooing motion with her hands.

“Can I keep the Bonanza for my time off?”

“Yes,” Holly said.

Todd watched as Lance fed the e-mail into his deskside shredder, then he got the hell out of there.

“Well?” Lance said to Holly. “What are you looking at?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Holly said, rising.

“None of this ever happened,” Lance said.

“Of course not,” Holly replied.

She went back to her office and started looking for something to take Lance’s mind off Teddy Fay.

ED EAGLE GOT DOWN a suitcase from the top shelf of his dressing room and started packing.

Susannah entered the room and watched for a moment. “Going somewhere?” she asked.

“I’ve got some business to take care of,” Eagle said.

“Where?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“I want to come with you,” she said.

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Ed, if you’re going to do this you’ll have a better chance of bringing it off if there are two of us.”

Eagle closed his suitcase and stared at her. “Listen to yourself. Where do you think I’m going?”

“ San Francisco,” she replied.

“Why San Francisco?”

“Because that’s where Barbara is.”

“Do you think I’m going to Barbara?”

“I think you’re going for Barbara.”

Eagle thought about that for a moment. “No. You have to stay here.”

“What makes you think you can tell me what to do?” she asked, her hands on her hips.

“I don’t know,” Eagle said. “I never tried before.”

She walked over and put her arms around his waist and her head on his shoulder. “And don’t you ever try again,” she said.

Eagle sighed and kissed the top of her head. “All right,” he said. “Pack a bag.”

She ran to her dressing room.

Eagle went back into his dressing room and opened his safe. There was an old.45 in there, one he hadn’t fired for years, one somebody had given to him, one that couldn’t be traced back to his ownership. He checked the magazine, pocketed another, then put the weapon into a holster and threaded it onto his belt.