Santa Fe Dead by Wood Stuart

Author:Wood, Stuart [Wood, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: 2008-04-22T05:00:00+00:00

47

ALEX REESE WAS sitting at his desk the following morning when the phone rang. “Alex Reese.”

“Detective Reese? This is Dr. Anthony DeMarco in Los Angeles, returning your call. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I’ve had a busy week.”

“Thank you for calling, Dr. DeMarco. Do you own a Beech Bonanza?” He gave him the registration number.

“Yes, I do.”

“Have you recently flown your airplane to Santa Fe?”

“No, I haven’t, but I lease the airplane to the Compton Flying Club at Compton Airport, and one of their members may have rented it and flown it there. I’ll give you their number.”

Reese wrote down the number. “Thank you very much, Dr. DeMarco,” he said, then hung up and phoned the club.

“Compton Flying Club. This is Margie,” a woman’s voice said.

“Good morning. My name is Detective Alex Reese, from the Santa Fe, New Mexico, Police Department.”

“What can I do for you?”

Reese gave her the relevant dates. “Did you rent Dr. Anthony DeMarco’s Beech Bonanza to a member that weekend?”

“Hang on, let me check the log.” She came back. “Yes, we rented it to a member named Jack Cato.”

Reese’s heart leapt, then he had another thought. He gave her some earlier dates.

“Yes, we rented the Bonanza to Mr. Cato then, too.”

“Were you there when Mr. Cato took off?”

“Not the second time; he asked me to fuel the airplane and leave the key under the nose wheel. But the first weekend I was there when they left.”

“Someone was with him?”

“Yes, another man.”

“Do you know the other man’s name?”

“Jack called him Grif. I don’t know his last name.”

“Would you be kind enough to write me a letter to that effect?” Reese gave her his address, then hung up. He went immediately to the D.A.’s office.

Bob Martínez waved Reese to a chair. “What’s up?”

“You’re not going to believe this: Jack Cato and Grif Edwards killed Donna Wells and her son, and Cato fired the shot that struck Susannah Wilde.”

“They did both?”

“Well, I think Cato worked alone on the Wilde thing, but Edwards was with him for the Wells murders. I have a witness that saw them take off together in the Bonanza from Compton Airport, in L.A. I don’t have a witness yet who saw them in Santa Fe, but I’ve got one at the airport who puts Cato in the Bonanza the second time. She made him from a movie he was in, one of Don Wells’s pictures.”

“This is fantastic work, Alex, but I don’t get the Susannah Wilde thing. What connection does Wells have with her?”

“Well, they’re both in the movie business; maybe they know each other that way. That’s going to take some more investigating.”

“Oh, another thing,” Martínez said. “There’s a break in the murder case of Donna’s first husband. Wells’s alibi for that occasion now has a crack in it.”

“Wonderful! Will you get me a murder warrant for Jack Cato and Grif Edwards? I’ll get the LAPD to pick them up, and then we’ll extradite them.”

“I’ll not only get that warrant; I’ll get you extradition papers, too.

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