Santa Fe Edge (5 page)

“You want me there?”

“Nah, Mike, I’ll meet you in Houston next Tuesday night. You’ve already booked the hotel, haven’t you?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to be sure you felt up to playing.”

“I will by next week.”

“Okay, I’m just going to lie around the house until then. See you in Houston.”

Tip took calls from his agent and sponsors as well, then things quieted down. He had a call from the medical examiner’s office saying that Connie’s body had been released. Ed Eagle’s office recommended a mortuary, and he ordered the body collected and cremated. Connie had no family, so there was no one to notify.

As he was getting some pocket money from the safe he saw the envelopes holding their wills, and he opened Connie’s, which he hadn’t seen before. It turned out that she had received a substantial settlement in her last divorce, and she had left everything to him. His net worth had suddenly been increased by some seven hundred thousand dollars. He faxed the will to Eagle’s office.

Tip made himself a sandwich for lunch and thought about what had happened. Who the hell could Connie have been fucking? And why would the guy want to kill her? If he’d been five minutes earlier coming home, he might have surprised them. Then it occurred to him that if that had happened, the guy might have killed them both.

He put his dishes into the dishwasher and went back to the safe, where he kept a small nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. He threaded the holster onto his belt and pulled out his shirttail to cover it. He would carry it for a while, at least while he was in Santa Fe. He was licensed in the state, and his old Florida license covered him in nearly half the country.

He went into his study and found a stack of bills next to his computer. Connie had usually paid them online, but he knew how to do it. The one on top was her credit card bill, and there were a lot of lunch charges, and judging from the amounts, they were for two people. That surprised him, because Connie had not made a lot of friends since she had been in Santa Fe. The charges were from half a dozen of Santa Fe’s best restaurants.

Tip called Ed Eagle and told him what he had found.

“That’s interesting,” Eagle said. “I think the police might like to know who she’d been lunching with, but I think we might like to know first. Will you spring for a few hundred dollars for an investigator to visit the restaurants?”

“Sure, Ed. By the way, I faxed you Connie’s will. I’d like you to take care of whatever legalities are involved.”

“I’ll put an associate on it,” Eagle said, “and I’ll send a messenger out there for the original; we’ll need it.”

“I’ll leave it on the front porch in an envelope,” Tip said.

“Good. I’ll let you know what our investigator learns, and we can decide if it should go to the police.”

“Good, thanks.”

“One other thing,” Eagle said. “I’ve spoken to the medical examiner, and there was no DNA present at the scene, not yours or anybody else’s.”

“So, he would have used a condom?”

“One supposes. Have you thought any more about the killer? Does anyone leap to mind?” Eagle asked.

“No. Connie didn’t have many friends in Santa Fe.”

“Someone from out of town?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Be careful of your behavior, Tip. The police are still thinking about you, and they may even have you followed.”

“I thought I was cleared.”

“Not necessarily. The charges have been dropped, but the D.A. could always bring them again, if new and incriminating evidence should emerge. You have to remember that having the charges dropped was a slap in the face to the investigating detectives, so they’re not exactly on your side.”

“I don’t see how they can find anything incriminating,” Tip said. “After all, I didn’t do it.”

“Right. Fax me the credit card bills, and I’ll get back to you as soon as our investigator checks them out.”

Tip hung up, put the will in an envelope and left it leaning against the front door with Eagle’s name on it, then went back to paying bills. He was going to have to hire a secretary, he thought.

7

T
eddy Fay’s single-engine Cessna 182 RG crossed a range of snowcapped mountains late in the afternoon. It had been a long day against headwinds. He looked to his right at Lauren Cade, who seemed to be dozing. He placed a hand on her knee, and she stirred. “We’ll be on the ground at Santa Fe in fifteen minutes,” he said.

Lauren looked around. “What are these mountains?”

“The Sangre de Cristos,” he said. “They run up to Taos, north of here.”

“What about south?”

“They peter out.”

“Pretty. Is it going to be cold in Santa Fe?”

“Probably, but it’s a dry cold. You won’t feel it so much.”

“I’m going to have to buy a coat,” she said. “I didn’t own one in Florida.”

“We’ll both have to do that,” Teddy said.

Albuquerque Center called. “Descend and maintain one zero thousand,” the controller said. “Report the airport in sight.”

The weather was startlingly clear, and after consulting the GPS map, he thought he could pick out the field. The automated weather recording said that the wind was 190 at 10 knots. Five minutes later he reported the airport in sight.

“Cleared for the visual approach to Santa Fe,” the controller said.

Teddy descended to eight thousand, and once at that altitude, he turned left downwind for runway twenty and called Santa Fe tower.

“Cleared to land on twenty,” the controller replied.

He touched down smoothly on the runway and taxied to Santa Fe Jetcenter, where a rental car awaited them. He placed a fuel order and arranged hangar space, then he and Lauren drove into the city.

“Teddy,” she said, “I know there are some things you haven’t told me about yourself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you talk so little about your past. I just want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, your life began the day I met you.”

Teddy smiled. “I feel exactly the same way,” he said. He had been struggling with how much to tell her, and how to justify his behavior since he had retired from the CIA some years before after a thirty-year career. Teddy had been an assistant deputy director for technical services at the Agency. Tech Services was the innocuous name for the department that supported foreign agents in the field, supplying identities, weapons, disguises, communications and anything else they might need. The work had given him an astonishing range of skills, and he had used them to stay out of prison. He turned to Lauren.

“I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for thirty years. I know that sounds like a bad pickup line in a bar, but it’s true.”

“I believe you,” she said. “Is that why you know so much about so many things?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you have to do bad things?”

“I’ve done some bad things, and I don’t want to talk about them, if that’s all right.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’d just as soon not know.” Lauren had been a sergeant with a special investigative unit of the Florida State Police. She’d left a good career to go with Teddy. He knew it and was grateful.

“I’ve booked us into the Inn of the Anasazi for a week,” he said. “If you like the town, we can look for a house to rent. If not, we can go on to California whenever you like.”

They continued into the town, drove through the Plaza and checked into the hotel, which, like just about everything else in the town, was built in Santa Fe style. A fire of piñon logs burned in the lobby, and the piney scent filled the air.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, eighteen hundred miles east of Santa Fe, Holly Barker arrived at her office a little after seven AM. Holly was assistant deputy director of operations, reporting directly to the director of operations, Lance Cabot, and she wanted to get to the office before he did. Lance had been on leave when she had returned from a month in Orchid Beach, Florida, where she had once been the chief of police.

She had been in her office for only a moment when Lance rapped on her doorjamb.

“Welcome back,” she said.

“Same to you. Anything to report?”

Holly took a deep breath. “Yes. Maybe you’d better sit down.”

“Come into my office,” he said.

She followed him down the hall and sat on his sofa, next to the chair where Lance liked to sit during meetings.

“So?”

Holly decided to just blurt it out. “Teddy Fay is still alive,” she said.

Lance put his face in his hands. “I didn’t hear that,” he said. “And I’m not going to hear the rest of what you have to tell me.”

“I met him in Orchid Beach,” she said. “I had no idea who he was.”

“He would have planned it that way,” Lance said. “Do you think he planned to meet you?”

“No, I’m certain he didn’t, but I’m also certain he knew who I was.”

“Is he still there?”

“No, he left town shortly before I did. I stopped by the cottage he rented to say good-bye to his girlfriend, a state police officer named Lauren Cade, who I knew in the army. The house had been cleared.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“I didn’t until the last day. I found him interesting, and a little odd. He was an excellent cook.”

“He cooked dinner for you?”

“For my boyfriend, Lauren and me.”

“Good God.”

“When I stopped by the cottage to see Lauren, there was a big safe in a closet that I didn’t know about. He had left a note on the safe for the landlord. The note said the combination was T-E-D-D-Y.”

“Any idea where he went when he left Orchid Beach?”

“None,” she said. “He could be anywhere.”

“He’s not anywhere,” Lance said. “He’s somewhere. Have you met Todd Bacon, who’s the station chief in Panama?”

“No.”

“He has a special interest in finding Teddy,” Lance said. “Call him and tell him he’s done in Panama, to report to me here as soon as he can clear his desk and pack his things.”

“Am I going to be involved in this?” she asked.

“Do you want to be?”

“No more than I have to.”

“You can brief Todd on your experience with Teddy in Orchid Beach,” Lance said. “After that I’ll try to keep you out of it. I know you have some sympathy for him.”

“I’ll do what I can to help,” Holly said, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

8

T
ip Hanks stood outside the clubhouse at Las Campanas, hitting chip shots to the practice green. About one out of six was going into the cup, but, of course, he was hitting from the same position. Still, he was getting better at sinking chip shots, and that could win tournaments. Tip had had a number of top-ten finishes this season, and one in the top five. He was determined, in the next season, to start winning, instead of just making a good living.

The season playoffs were just ahead—four tournaments—and the winner on points would win the FedEx Cup, and that was a ten-million-dollar check. Tiger Woods was out with a knee injury, so it was anybody’s to win.

A member ambled by and stopped for a moment to convey his condolences. Tip was momentarily surprised. He had been shaken by Connie’s death but, he reflected, more shaken when he had been arrested. It had not been much of a relationship beyond sex, and he wondered—not for the first time—if God had somehow short-changed him in the emotions department.

He walked over to the driving range, teed up a ball and snapped into his brain’s swing mode, which obviated any other thought, even of his dead wife. He hit a bucket of balls with his driver and fairway woods and was satisfied with the results. He had improved his driving a lot this season by shaving ten yards off his length and hitting fairways instead of hooks and slices.

He had lunch in the bar, then put away his clubs and went home. When he got out of the car he saw an envelope propped against his front door. Inside was a letter.

Dear Mr. Hanks,

My name is Dolly Parks, and first of all I want to tell you how sad I was to hear of Connie’s death. We had met only recently, but I liked and admired her.

We met when I posted a notice on a bulletin board at the farmers market in town, seeking an assistant’s position, full- or part-time. She called me, and we had lunch, and she told me that the two of you had discussed hiring someone to deal with the bills, the house maintenance and travel arrangements. I was supposed to start next Monday.

I don’t know if you are still interested in hiring someone, but I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about it. My number is below.

Her résumé was attached. She had held office and secretarial jobs in New York for a period of ten years or so.

Connie and he had talked about hiring a secretary, Tip remembered. He picked up the phone, called her and asked her to come to the house for a drink in the late afternoon.

He showered and shaved and dressed, then took an hour’s nap. By the time he had roused himself and dressed, the doorbell was ringing.

Dolly Parks was unexpectedly attractive—small, blond and shapely. She had dressed in informal but appropriate clothes for her interview. Tip invited her into his study. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” she said. “Maybe later.”

“I liked your résumé,” he said. “Sounds like you’re a well-organized person. When did you last see Connie?”

“At the end of last week. She called the day before she … died and said that she had checked my references and that I was hired.”

“At what salary?” he asked.

“Twenty-five dollars an hour, health insurance, three weeks’ vacation after six months. She said that she thought you would need me only half a day, but if the work mounted up, maybe longer. That’s why we agreed on an hourly rate. I have one other client in Santa Fe, but I work for him only a couple of hours a day, three days a week.”

“That sounds fine to me. I’m leaving on Tuesday to play a tournament. Can you start tomorrow? I’d like to get you familiar with the computer banking I’ve set up.”