by Stuart Woods
“Back to the combination of the safe: How would they have opened it?”
Wells looked baffled. “I don’t know. Safecracker, maybe? The safe cost less than a thousand dollars; it was meant to be fireproof and burglarproof, but I don’t suppose it would stand up to a professional safecracker.”
“What is the combination?”
“It’s an electronic keypad; the combination was DWELLS.”
“Not very smart,” Eagle said.
Wells looked sheepish. “It was the first six letters I thought of, I guess.”
“Then they could have just guessed and got lucky.”
“I suppose.”
“Did your wife know the combination?”
“Yes.”
“More likely they pointed a gun at your son and demanded the combination from your wife.”
“She would certainly have given it to them, in those circumstances.”
“Mr. Wells… ”
“Don, please.”
“Don, did your wife have a will?”
“Yes. Both her will and mine are in my safe in Malibu.”
“Have you read it?”
“No; both wills are in sealed envelopes.”
“Are you familiar with the terms of her will?”
“Only what she told me: that she had made a large bequest to her family’s charitable foundation and some other, smaller bequests to distant relatives, servants, that sort of thing. Then there would have been a large bequest to a trust for our son, to ensure that he had a home and proper care. I think I told you, he’s… was autistic.”
“Is there a bequest to you in the will?”
“Yes, but I don’t know of what size.”
“Your wife, I understand, was a very wealthy woman.”
“Yes, she was; her great-grandfather established a pharmaceutical company in the late nineteenth century. It was a private company, until after her father’s death some years ago; it was taken public, then she gradually liquidated her holdings.”
“What was she worth?”
“I don’t really know, but I think, probably, some hundreds of million dollars.”
“I have to ask you some other questions now, and please don’t take offense; this is absolutely necessary, and the district attorney is going to want them answered, too.”
“Go ahead. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“What is your own net worth, Don, separate from your wife’s?”
“Well, we owned the two houses together, so half of the value of those, I guess. Maybe twenty million dollars. Then I have some investments, probably another three million, plus other possessions. Maybe a total of twenty-five million dollars? I can have my business manager put together a financial statement, if you like.”
“Please do so tomorrow and have it faxed to my office. Now, who paid for the two houses?”
“My wife did; she insisted. While I’m very well off and could have afforded to buy the Santa Fe house, I could not have afforded the Malibu Colony house. She chose them both and bought them.”
“But they were put in both your names.”
“Yes, that’s how she wanted it.”
“What sort of income do you earn from your film business? An average for the last five years, or so?”
“Let’s see: probably an average of two and a half, three million dollars. I have prospects for a lot more in the future.”
“Will your wife’s death affect your income?”
“No. She had no interest in my business. She loaned me the money to get it started, and I repaid her.”
“I assume you can substantiate that.”
“Of course. My business manager has copies of all the documents.”
“I’ll want to see those, too,” Eagle said. “One more question, then I’ll let you get to bed, and I need a perfectly honest answer. Remember, this is a privileged conversation.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you now having or have you ever had an affair outside your marriage?”
“I’ve slept with a few women, mostly minor actresses or crew on my pictures. Nothing serious, ever.”
“Define serious.”
“Serious enough to make me think of leaving my wife.”
“I warn you, Don, if you are being less than frank with me, it will come back and bite you on the ass.”
“I’m being perfectly frank with you,” Wells said.
Eagle thought he believed the man.
“Good. We have an appointment at nine tomorrow morning in my office with the district attorney, Roberto Martínez, and a Detective Reese. You’ll give a formal statement along the lines of our previous conversations on the phone and tonight. I’ll pick you up out front at eight forty-five.”
"Fine.”
19
IT WAS NEARLY Eagle’s bedtime when he got home, and Susannah was already asleep in his bed, but there was something on his mind, and he had to deal with it.
He went to his study and switched on the computer, then opened his word-processing program and began to write.
To Walter Keeler:
Dear Mr. Keeler,
You and I are not acquainted, but I am in possession of some informationwhich I feel you should have. I met Joe Wilen on the golf course today in Santa Fe, and during our conversation later at the clubhouse, he told me that you and he had been business associates and that he is your personal attorney. I thought it would be better if I asked him to deliver this letter than if I simply sent it to you. I have not, however, discussed its contents with him. I have told him only that it concerns the woman you recently married. The following is everything that I know of her.
She was born Hannah Schlemmer, in Cleveland, Ohio, one of three daughters, to a Jewish pawnbroker. As an adult she moved to New York City and worked in a restaurant there. At some point she married a diamondwholesaler named Murray Rifkind, and she worked for some time at running his office.
She subsequently met a man named James Grafton and fell in love with him, apparently her first time. Grafton had a criminal background, and he convinced her that the only way they could be together was for him to rob Rifkind’s business premises. She went to the office and used her knowledge of its security systems to admit him for the robbery. Grafton then shot and killed her husband. She was shocked, she said, but he forced her to come with him to Miami, where he liquidated the diamonds he had stolen.
Shortly after that, they were both arrested. Hannah then agreed to cooperatewith the prosecution and testified against Grafton. She pled to involuntarymanslaughter and received a sentence of five to eight years in a women’s prison near Poughkeepsie, New York. During this time, I visited her in connection with a double murder in a client’s home in Santa Fe, involving her older sister, Miriam, who had changed her name to Julia. Hannah would ordinarily have been considered for parole after three years served, but as a result of a lawsuit against the State of New York alleging prison overcrowding, she was released early and unconditionally. While in prison, she legally changed her name to Barbara Kennerly.
Shortly after her release, Barbara came to Santa Fe and contacted me. I helped her find employment, and we began to see each other socially. A romance developed, and we were married a year later.
We had been married for a year when I awoke one morning to find that I had been drugged the night before and that Barbara had left Santa Fe after emptying my bank accounts of an amount exceeding a million dollars and wire-transferred the funds to a Cayman Islands bank and thence to one in Mexico City. She also attempted to empty my brokerage accounts, but I was able to prevent that minutes before the broker would have wired the proceeds.
I hired a former IRS agent, specializing in forensic financial work, who was able to recover all but $300,000 of the funds. I also hired two private investigators to go to Mexico and try to persuade Barbara to sign divorce papers and a settlement agreement giving her the $300,000. She shot one of the investigators and pushed the other off a ferry in the Gulf of C
ortez. Both recovered. My investigators learned during this period that Barbara and her sister, Julia, by then deceased, were being sought by the Mexican police on a charge of having cut off the penis of a man they said was trying to rape them.
Barbara eluded my investigators and crossed the border into California, where she hid in a well-known spa in La Jolla and had her appearance altered.She came to Los Angeles and saw me in the dining room of the Hotel Bel-Air. Because of the changes in her appearance, I did not recognize her.
Later that night, she drugged the man she was staying with, returned to the hotel and went to the suite where she and I had stayed a number of times while we were married. Unfortunately, the suite was occupied by another couple, and she shot both of them in their sleep, then returned to her friend’s house. The following morning, he did not realize that she had left the house.
She was later arrested and tried for the two murders. While waiting for the verdict and fearing conviction, she escaped from a courthouse conference room and, with the help of a friend, made her way to the El Rancho Encantado Spa. She had, by this time, bought a forged driver’s license and passport in the name of Eleanor Wright. Ironically, she was acquitted at trial, due to the testimony of her friend, who placed her in his home at the time of the murders. It was at this point you made her acquaintance.
I know that all this will come as a shock to you, because Barbara is a very convincing liar. It will seem strange to you, as it does to me, that, having been released from prison and being comfortably married, she would then decamp with my funds and be willing to kill, both to avoid being detained and to take some sort of revenge against me. A psychiatrist friend of mine who knew her says that she is certainly a sociopath and may be a paranoid schizophrenic, a dangerous one. Perhaps it runs in her family, because her older sister murdered three people, one of them her youngest sister.
I tell you these things simply as a matter of conscience, because I believe that you may well be at considerable personal risk. I have no other motive.
My address and phone number are on my letterhead, should you wish to contact me. In the meantime, I hope you will take steps to protect yourself and your property.
Sincerely,
Ed Eagle
Eagle signed the letter, put it into an envelope and sealed it, then he went to bed and slept well.
20
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Eagle picked up Donald Wells at his hotel and drove him the short distance to his law office. They parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to Eagle’s seventh-floor penthouse offices.
He took Wells into his private office, sat him down and gave him coffee. “Don,” he said, “I want you to answer the questions of Martínez and Reese fully, but don’t overdo it; that would make you appear nervous and not credible. Answer only the questions they ask; don’t volunteer anything. If they fail to ask some question I deem important to your status, I will ask the question. They will record your answers, and they may well videotape you, as well. Do you have any objections to that?”
“No, none at all,” Wells replied. He seemed perfectly relaxed.
Eagle’s secretary came into the office with a courier package, and he opened it. “Ah, here are the documents concerned with your business setup and your financial statement.” He handed the statement to Wells. “Does this seem correct to you?”
Wells looked it over while Eagle reviewed the business documents.
“Yes, it does.”
“Then sign it at the bottom.” Eagle had his secretary come in and notarize it. “Mr. Martínez and Mr. Reese are here,” she said, “and they have some sort of technician with them.”
“Please send them in,” Eagle said. He stood and greeted the men and offered them coffee while the technician set up a video camera and fitted everyone with microphones.
“Are we ready?” Martínez asked.
“Perfectly,” Eagle replied.
Martínez nodded to the technician to start the camera, which was pointed at Wells. Martínez noted the date and time, then began. “This is the recorded statement of Donald Wells as to the facts surrounding the death of his wife and son. Present are Mr. Wells, his attorney, Ed Eagle, Detective Alex Reese and myself, Roberto Martínez, district attorney of Santa Fe County. Mr. Wells, are you aware that your voice and image are being recorded?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do we have your permission to record this interview?”
“Yes.”
Martínez read Wells his rights and produced a Bible and swore him in. “Now, Mr. Wells, please give us an account of your actions from the time you first heard of the kidnapping of your wife and son.”
Wells went through his story in a lucid fashion, interrupted only occasionally by questions from Martínez and Reese.
“What did you do after you received the phone call saying your wife and son had been kidnapped?”
“I called the house and got no answer, then I called Mr. Eagle and asked him to go to the house and check it out. I gave him directions on where to find a key, and I also gave him the alarm code.”
“For the record,” Eagle said, “when I arrived at the house, the front door was unlocked and the alarm had not been armed.”
“My wife would normally only lock the door and arm the alarm if she was going out or before retiring at night.”
Martínez questioned Wells about the contents of his safe, which had been found open, and he replied fully.
“Our theory,” Eagle said, “is that the perpetrators threatened the boy, in order to get the combination from Mrs. Wells.”
Martínez nodded. “It strikes me as a very good way to give a hired killer an instant payoff,” he said.
“That is a conclusion not supported by the facts,” Eagle said.
“I had nothing whatever to do with the death of my wife and son,” Wells said.
“Then perhaps you can tell me why a kidnapper, facing the prospect of a five-million-dollar profit, would immediately murder his hostages for a fifty-thousand-dollar payoff?”
Wells shrugged. “Maybe he got cold feet, and when he found the contents of the safe, decided to settle for that.”
“I should point out, Bob,” Eagle said, “that the collection of a ransom is a very high-risk activity for the perpetrator, offering multiple opportunities to be caught, whereas the taking of the cash and gold coins held the promise of a higher level of safety.”
“But then why would he kill the woman and the boy?”
“Kidnappers,” Eagle said, “historically decide early in their planning whether to kill the hostages or free them after the ransom has been collected. This particular perpetrator obviously traded their lives for his own safety.”
“Did your wife have a will, Mr. Wells?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Are you aware of its provisions?”
“Only in a general sense, from what she told me. Both our wills were executed on the same day, placed in envelopes that were sealed by the attorneys, then placed in my safe in Malibu.”
“And what was your understanding of the benefits of the will with regard to yourself?”
“She mentioned nothing in that regard.”
“Was it your assumption that she would leave you a large bequest?”
“We never discussed it; her money was not a factor in our marriage.”
“A national magazine has ranked your wife as the fifth wealthiest woman in the United States,” Martínez said, “with a net worth in the billions.”
“She laughed at that when she heard,” Wells said.
Eagle spoke up. “Mrs. Wells did loan Mr. Wells the money to set up what has become a successful film company, and he repaid the loan. Here are copies of the relevant documents and a notarized copy of Mr. Wells’s personal financial statement, as prepared by his business manager. As you will see, he has a net worth of some twenty-five million dollars, which does not include Mrs. Wells’s share of their two homes, which would normally accrue to him upon
her death. He earns a multimillion-dollar income from his film company, as well, so he would have no financial motive against his wife.”
“I think we’ll decide that after seeing Mrs. Wells’s will.”
“We will be happy for Mr. Wells to authorize his attorneys to give you a copy of the will, even though we do not know its contents.”
“How soon?” Martínez asked.
“I’ll call them today,” Wells replied.
“What else can we do for you, Bob?” Eagle asked.
Martínez looked at Reese, who shook his head.
“Have his attorneys fax me the will,” Martínez said, handing Eagle his card. “That will be all for the present.”
“Bob,” Eagle said, “is Mr. Wells a suspect in this case?”
“Let’s just say that he remains a person of interest,” Martínez replied.
“I would prefer it if you would couch that in more positive terms when you speak to the press,” Eagle said.
“I’ll just say that Mr. Wells has not been charged. Will he be available in Santa Fe if we have further questions?”
Eagle looked at his client. “Don?”
“My wife expressed a wish to be cremated and have her ashes scattered on our property in Santa Fe,” Wells said. “I can stay for a few more days, until that is accomplished, but then I must return to Los Angeles for business reasons. I have just finished shooting a film in Rome, and I must begin the postproduction process, if I am to make our release date.”
“When will the bodies be released?” Eagle asked.
“Today, I should think. All right, Mr. Wells, you may return to Los Angeles, but I would be grateful if you would be available by telephone.”
“Of course,” Wells said, handing Martínez his card. “And I want to say how grateful I am for your and Detective Reese’s efforts in the solution of this crime.”
Everyone shook hands cordially, and the visitors left.
“What do you think?” Wells asked when they were gone.
“You did well,” Eagle said.
