Santa Fe Edge
Santa Fe Edge
Number IV of
Ed Eagle
Stuart Woods
Putnam Adult (2010)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Mysteryttt Suspensettt Thrillerttt
If you run into trouble in Santa Fe, Ed Eagle is the man to see.
Ed Eagle, the six-feet-six, take-no-prisoners Santa Fe attorney, has recovered from his encounters with Mexican organized crime and-more treacherously-his ex-wife, Barbara. Now a mysterious new client has come his way, one who may shed light into some dark corners of Ed's past...and put him in danger once more.
Table of Contents
BOOKS BY STUART WOODS
FICTION
Lucid Intervals
2
Kisser
2
Hothouse Orchid
1
Loitering with Intent
2
Mounting Fears
3
Hot Mahogany
2
Santa Fe Dead
4
Beverly Hills Dead
Shoot Him If He Runs
2
Fresh Disasters
2
Short Straw
4
Dark Harbor
2
Iron Orchid
1
Two-Dollar Bill
2
The Prince of Beverly Hills
Reckless Abandon
2
Capital Crimes
3
Dirty Work
2
Blood Orchid
1
The Short Forever
2
Orchid Blues
1
Cold Paradise
2
L.A. Dead
2
The Run
3
Worst Fears Realized
2
Orchid Beach
1
Swimming to Catalina
2
Dead in the Water
2
Dirt
2
Choke
Imperfect Strangers
Heat
Dead Eyes
L.A. Times
Santa Fe Rules
4
New York Dead
2
Palindrome
Grass Roots
3
White Cargo
Deep Lie
3
Under the Lake
Run Before the Wind
3
Chiefs
3
TRAVEL
A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (1979)
MEMOIR
Blue Water, Green Skipper (1977)
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), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, 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 © 2010 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 edge / Stuart Woods. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44344-6
1. Eagle, Ed (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Organized crime—Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. 3. Divorced women—Fiction. 4. Santa Fe (N.M.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.O642S
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 Bonnie Piceu and Paul Dietz.
1
E
d Eagle sat at his breakfast table and watched his new wife, Susannah Wilde, cook his breakfast. He was a lucky man, he thought.
She set down two plates of huevos rancheros and joined him.
“What are you doing today?” he asked. He was concerned that she might become bored, and he didn’t want that.
“I’m having lunch with a producer I worked with a few years back, Dan Karman. You remember that novel I bought a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, sure.”
“Danny’s written a screenplay based on it, and we’re going to talk about shooting it in Santa Fe.” Susannah was a well-known actress.
“Sounds great,” Eagle replied, and he meant it. He didn’t want her spending a lot of time in L.A., shooting a movie.
“What are you up to?” Susannah asked.
“The usual. I’m having a first meeting with a man who’s been charged with murdering his wife. It happened early this morning.”
“You meet such nice people in your work,” she said.
“Oh, this one’s quite a nice fellow, I’m told, and he might even be innocent.”
“I thought all your clients were innocent.”
“He’s not my client yet,” Eagle replied. “If he’s not innocent now, he will be by the end of the day.”
Susannah laughed. “That’s my Ed,” she said, pouring him a second cup of coffee. “Do you remember a film producer named James Long?”
Eagle put down his coffee. “I certainly do,” he replied. “He’s the guy who furnished Barbara’s alibi in her trial for murdering those people at the Hotel Bel-Air, when she thought she was murdering me.”
“Long has his own production company, backed by inherited wealth, and Danny thinks he might be a good choice to get this film made. How would you feel about that?”
Eagle shrugged. “I don’t have anything against the guy,” he said. “I suppose he’s as much Barbara’s victim as I. She drugged him, left the house, shot those two people, then returned before he woke up. He thought she was in bed with him the whole time, and testified to that.”
“Long might be the best way to go,” she said. “He puts up a big chunk of the production money, then raises the rest from private investors, so he doesn’t have to take any crap from a studio.”
“Sounds good, but how does he distribute?”
“He has a good track record for making successful films on moderate budgets, so the distributors look on him favorably. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I liked the novel,” Eagle said. “I hope you get a good screenplay.”
“You can read it tonight,” she said, clearing the table.
AN HOUR LATER Eagle sat in the attorneys’ visiting room at the Santa Fe Municipal Jail, waiting for his prospective client. He read through a single-page report put together by an associate in his firm.
Terrence Hanks, known as Tip, is a twenty-nine-year-old golf professional, born in Delano, Georgia, a small town, and educated in the public schools and on a golf scholarship at Florida State University. He got his PGA Tour card six years ago and moved to Santa Fe two and a half years ago, building a house out at Las Campanas.